Spend the first group meeting agreeing the problem, not on a demo: write the champion's invitation, circulate what each function told you, open on the problem and ask who sees it differently.
The deal needs a group to agree, and the first big meeting with that group is coming.
Do not spend it on a demo. Spend it on agreeing what the problem is. Before the meeting, agree a problem statement with your champion and write the invitation for them. Send round a short pre-read that puts on the table what each function told you separately, especially the things only one of them knows. Open the meeting by restating the problem, the objective and the cost of carrying on as things are. Then ask the room who sees the problem differently.
Asking for disagreement is the point, not good manners. A buying group that disagrees about the problem rarely says so with the seller in the room. It says so later, in a meeting you never attend, and the decision dies there. The pre-read matters for a related reason: groups tend to discuss what everyone already knows and leave unsaid the pieces only one person holds.
Jen Allen-Knuth's meeting request, published by Gong. The champion sends it over their own name, and you write it. Four lines: as the team considers the problem, the champion has asked you to spend 30 minutes with them; the champion met you this week to give you context on their plans and the roadblocks so far; you had a useful perspective on the problem, based on two named things; and it ends "Any concerns with spending 30 mins on this together?"
The opening and the question, from the same post. Open by resharing the problem statement. Her example for a chief revenue officer: the board wants revenue doubled while profitability rises, so the only route is more profit per rep, and then what makes that hard. Then invite disagreement about the root cause: "Who has a different opinion on the way we've outlined the problem here?" And ask what the statement is missing. Before the meeting she has the champion name who is most likely to be sceptical, who favours the status quo, who would define the problem differently, and what the group last disagreed about.
The pre-read. No published source shows a seller-written pre-read for a buying committee. What the research says it must carry is the information only one member holds: in the largest review of group decisions, the share of that unique information that got mentioned was what went with better decisions.
Priya Parker's rule for a gathering, from outside selling. She argues that a meeting needs "heat", a purpose specific enough to be disputed. In a 2018 interview she passes on four questions the experience designer Ida Benedetto asks before designing anything: what is the group avoiding, what is the gift in facing it, what is the risk in facing it, and is the gift worth the risk. The chapter is "Cause Good Controversy" in The Art of Gathering.
Nobody has measured the move. No study compares a group meeting opened on the problem with dissent invited against the same meeting opened with a demo, or a meeting with a seller-written pre-read against one without.
Buying groups are usually already in conflict. Gartner's 2025 survey of 632 B2B buyers found unhealthy conflict in 74% of buying teams, and that groups reaching consensus were 2.5 times more likely to call the deal high quality. Its finding on messages aimed at the group against messages aimed at individuals is under After a group call, write to each person separately. Gartner sells research and advice to sales organisations. It is also the warning: most conflict in these groups is already the unhealthy kind, so inviting more is not safe by default.
Talking about the product instead of the problem goes with losing. Gong's analysis of 8,382 deals shows win rates falling from 26% to 5% as time spent on product features rises towards 500 seconds. The figures sit in the charts, the deals are Gong's own customers, and nothing isolates how the meeting opened. The timing argument for winning the champion before the group meeting is under Build the champion first, widen with them.
One steady dissenter makes a group notice more. Charlan Nemeth and colleagues ran two experiments in 1990. Students in groups of four heard lists of words and were told that one person, or three, had noticed something different. When a single person disagreed consistently, people recalled 60% of the words, against 48% for a group told nothing; when a majority disagreed, recall fell to 39%. A group told everyone agreed recalled slightly less than one told nothing.
Groups discuss what they already share. In Garold Stasser and William Titus's 1985 experiment, each member of a group got part of the information pointing to the better option, so only pooling would reveal it. The groups mostly failed to pool: they discussed what they held in common and chose worse than their combined knowledge allowed. Li Lu, Connie Yuan and Poppy McLeod's review of 65 studies and 3,189 groups found that groups facing this split were eight times less likely to find the right answer than groups given everything, that putting it in writing instead of talking made no difference, and that the share of unique information mentioned went with better decisions.
The dissent and pooling evidence comes from students in laboratory groups, not a buying committee with a budget at stake, and Gartner's survey says most conflict inside buying groups is already the unhealthy kind. The comparisons that would settle it, the same meeting opened on the problem against opened on a demo, and with a seller's pre-read against without, have never been run.
Agree the problem statement with your champion, write their invitation, and send a pre-read that surfaces what only one function knows. Open on the problem, not a demo, and ask who sees it differently. The sequence is practitioner method; what has been measured is that group-level framing raises consensus, that one steady dissenting voice makes a group notice more, and that groups left alone bury the information only one of them holds.