Meeting Prep Prompt: 3 Links to Talking Points
Meeting in 30 minutes? Paste your prep reading and get structured talking points, likely stakeholder questions, and discussion starters — fast.
The Input Format That Gets the Best Meeting Prep
You’ve got a meeting in 30 minutes. Three articles are sitting in your browser tabs, unread. The meeting talking points prompt can rescue you — but only if you feed it properly.
The key is structured input. Don’t just dump raw text. Instead, frame your paste with context that tells AI exactly what you need. Here’s the format that works:
State the meeting purpose. “I’m presenting quarterly results to the leadership team” gives AI the lens to filter what matters.
Identify your audience. “The CFO cares about cost, the COO cares about timelines” — AI will weight the talking points accordingly.
Paste your reading materials. Label each document: “Document 1: Market Analysis” and “Document 2: Competitor Report” so AI can attribute insights correctly.
Specify your output. “Give me 5 talking points, 3 likely questions, and 2 discussion starters” tells AI exactly what format you need.
This structure transforms the prompt from a generic summarizer into a true prep for meeting assistant. You’ll walk in knowing exactly what to say — and anticipating what others will ask.
Running the Prompt: From Reading to Talking Points
Once your input is ready, paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or any AI tool along with the PR043 prompt above. The prompt’s four questions do the heavy lifting:
“What’s the key takeaway for decision-making?” cuts through fluff to find the one thing your audience must know.
“What data matters vs. what’s noise?” identifies which numbers are worth citing and which are decorative.
“What assumptions underlie the analysis?” surfaces risks you should be ready to address.
“What questions should I ask before acting on this?” turns into your own Q&A preparation — flip these into questions others might ask you.
The result: a set of briefing notes you can glance at before walking into the room. No more flipping through pages mid-meeting or fumbling for that one stat you half-remember.
After getting initial talking points, run this follow-up: “Now imagine you’re the skeptical CFO in this meeting. What three questions would you ask to poke holes in these talking points?” This is the fastest way to stress-test your prep.
Preparing for Stakeholder Questions
The best meeting prep doesn’t just cover what you’ll say — it anticipates what others will ask. AI can help here too, but you need to guide it.
After generating your talking points, add this follow-up prompt: “Based on this content and a [describe your audience] audience, what are the 5 most likely questions they’ll ask? For each, suggest a 2-sentence response.”
This generates a quick reference sheet for the Q&A portion. Keep it open on your laptop or print it. When someone asks “What about the competitor response?” you won’t be caught flat-footed.
A product manager needed to brief leadership on three analyst reports about market trends. She pasted all three with the context “presenting to CEO and board, focus on strategic implications.” AI generated: 4 talking points, 2 data visualizations to create, 5 likely questions, and a one-liner opening hook. Total prep time: 12 minutes.
When You Only Have 10 Minutes
Sometimes there’s no time for the full workflow. Here’s the stripped-down version:
Paste your reading. Skip detailed labeling — just dump the text.
Run the core prompt once. Get the four-part extraction.
Ask for compression. “Summarize this into 3 bullet points I must know.”
Skip the Q&A prep if time is tight. Knowing the content is more valuable than predicting questions. You can improvise answers; you can’t improvise knowledge.
AI doesn’t know your company’s internal politics, your boss’s pet peeves, or last week’s drama in the leadership meeting. It gives you content prep — you still need to apply judgment about how to present based on what you know about the people in the room.
Building Your Professional Reading Workflow
This meeting talking points prompt is one piece of the Reading for Work toolkit. For a complete professional reading system, pair it with:
Action Memo Prompt — when you need a full memo, not just talking points
Stakeholder Update Prompt — for written updates after the meeting
Executive Summary Prompt — for distilling long reports into one-pagers
Frequently Asked Questions
From Unread Tabs to Meeting-Ready in Minutes
Practice extracting key takeaways, building talking points, and preparing for stakeholder questions across 365 real articles.
Start Learning →Never Walk Into a Meeting Unprepared
You’ve got the meeting prep workflow. Now add stakeholder updates, decision matrices, and competitive intel to complete your professional reading stack.
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