How to prep for and review a call with AI.

I use this on both sides of every external call. Before: I walk in knowing who they are, what they care about, and what to ask. After: I turn the recording into notes, next steps, a logged record, and a drafted follow-up - without typing any of it up. I reach for the prep half before every meeting (and once on Monday for the whole week), and the review half the moment a call ends while it is fresh.

How I use this, and what for

I use this on both sides of every external call. Before: I walk in knowing who they are, what they care about, and what to ask. After: I turn the recording into notes, next steps, a logged record, and a drafted follow-up - without typing any of it up. I reach for the prep half before every meeting (and once on Monday for the whole week), and the review half the moment a call ends while it is fresh.

What the AI actually does

Prep is the AI reading every signal on an account and handing you the three things that matter, so you never read their website in the lobby. Review is the AI listening to the call for you - summary, pain, next steps, risk - then logging it and drafting the follow-up. The work that used to happen after hours (writing up notes, updating the CRM) happens in the minutes after you hang up.

The recording layer makes this work. Granola does not join the call as a bot - it runs on your own device, uses the system audio and microphone, and merges what you typed with what it heard, so the meeting feels normal. Fireflies records, transcribes and summarises calls across Zoom, Meet and Teams, then makes every conversation searchable, so you can pull a past call back up by a single phrase. Either way, the transcript is there for AI to read instead of you.

The tools and APIs you need

• Common Room
• Granola
• Fireflies
• Airtable
• Slack
• Claude

The right prompts

Prep a single call

```
Prep me for my call with [Company] tomorrow.
Use Common Room for who they are and recent signals.
Give me: who I am meeting, the 3 things I must know, the single best
opening question, and one risk to watch.
```

Prep the whole week at once

```
/common-room-weekly-prep-brief
Run my weekly prep brief for every external call in the next 7 days.
One short brief per call - who, why now, best opening question.
```

Review and log a finished call

```
My call with [Company] just finished - it is in Granola (or search Fireflies).
Summarise it: what was said, the real pain, next steps with owners, any risk.
Then log the outcome to the ATS Airtable base and draft my follow-up email.
```

How to do it

Before the call

Before the call

Pull the brief

with `common-room-call-prep` for the company. For a whole week, run `common-room-weekly-prep-brief` on Monday morning.

Read the three things that matter:

who you are meeting, the most recent signal, the one question that opens the real conversation. **After the call**

Grab the record

from [Granola](https://www.granola.ai/), or search [Fireflies](https://fireflies.ai/) for the transcript.

Summarise to a standard shape:

what was said, the pain, next steps with owners, any risk. One screen.

Log it

into the [Airtable](https://www.airtable.com/) ATS base so the pipeline stays current (skill 09).

Hand it off:

drop the summary into [Slack](https://slack.com/), and draft the follow-up with `common-room-compose-outreach` so it goes out the same day.

See the difference

Let AI carry the heavy lifting; you keep the judgement and the final say.

How you'll know it's working

• You walk in knowing the one thing that matters, not reading their website in the lobby.
• The Monday weekly brief means no call that week catches you cold.
• Within minutes of hanging up: notes written, CRM updated, follow-up drafted - and you never opened a doc to type.
• Nothing about the call lives only in your head.

Questions people ask