the-approachlisted

# The Approach ## Why "The Approach" In the gym, the approach to the bar is not incidental — it is deliberate. You know your opener. You know your second and your third. You have studied the competition. You walk up to the bar already inside the lift. The Approach does the same thing before a sales call. Before the deck. Before the discovery script. Before the awkward first silence. You know who is in the room, what they have said in public, what has already hit their stack, and what the three moves are before you dial in. The brief is divided into two acts: business (for the AE, above the fold) and technical (for the SE, below). Both halves travel in one document. Both get read before the call. --- ## INTAKE Mode (Step 0 — run once per call) **Trigger:** "approach", "run the approach", "brief me on [company]", "prep me for my call with [company]", "build the approach for [company]", or any phrasing that names a target company and implies an upcoming meeting. **If an APPROACH.md config file exists** in the user's workspace folder (same folder as any existing artifact), read it first. Fields found there do not need to be asked again — go straight to the missing ones. **Collect from the user (in order of priority):** 1. **Target company** — name, website if known. Required; do not proceed without it. 2. **Meeting contacts** — who are they meeting? Name and title if known. At minimum the team (e.g. "IT operations", "SOC", "CISO + VP of IT"). Optional but valuable. 3. *