Lunch For Success

A Power Lunch Blueprint Is Better Than Tons Of Tips

Posted on 31. Dec, 2008 by Craig Peters in Uncategorized

There are lots of sources of tips and suggestions for how to conduct a successful business lunch. For example, in our training video, The Power Lunch: A Modern Approach to the Business Lunch, the guest interview section contains lots of tips. We’re going to be giving lots of tips here on this blog and on other web sites that we’re building. And we’re not the only ones providing tips, of course. Robin Jay’s book The Art of the Business Lunch gives tons of great tips. The point is, there are lots of sources of tips out there, and in general that’s good.

But it’s important that you don’t focus solely on tips. We don’t want you to get bogged down trying to memorize 150 tips. Instead, you need a higher-level system to frame these tips. We’re here to help you build your Social Capital so think of this framework as a blueprint. Here’s why it’s important.

Every level of power lunch follows the same blueprint
It doesn’t matter if you’re just out of college having an informational interview or if you’re closing a multi-million dollar deal. The framework of the meal will be roughly the same.

Too many unorganized tips will overwhelm you
I know that it’s tempting to seek out every piece of power-lunch advice that you’ve ever heard and add that to your brain’s memory storage. That’s natural. But that will backfire if you don’t have a way to organize all that information. Remember, there are lots of non-lunch things that you must think about when you’re conducting business over lunch: your pitch, your proposal, your client’s objections, etc. The last thing you want is for your brain to be taxed and distracted with excessive amounts of detail that may or may not be relevant to your situation.

A framework allows you to free-form
No lunch will go exactly the way you plan it. It just won’t. Ever. Something will be different. By understanding this as a framework, you’ll have the flexibility to adjust.

You have your own style
Let me give you an example of what I mean here. Robin Jay suggests that for a special occasion, you might pick up your client in a limousine. She’s right to point out that it won’t work for everyone, and that’s the same for all tips that you come across. When someone suggests a way of handling a business lunch, ask yourself, “Is that something that I could comfortably do? Is that tip going to work with my style?” You don’t want to come across as uncomfortable or forced. Our blueprint allows you to apply your own style.

If you’ve developed your own framework or blueprint for your business lunches, let us know. If you’ve ever tried a tip that simply didn’t work for you, let us know that, too. We’d love to hear about it.

Happy Lunching!

Subscribe to The Power Lunch Blog by Email