How do I open a first call with a potential client?
Open a first call by inviting the potential client to talk first, with one question that hands them the floor. The opening question does more work than any other question on the call, because it sets who is doing the talking for the next twenty minutes.
My openers, depending on how the conversation started:
- Inbound: "What prompted your interest in talking today?"
- They reached out: "What prompted you to reach out?"
- You reached out: "What about my email sparked your interest?"
- A referral: "What was it about what Joe said that made you want to connect?"
Each one is a hot potato. It gives them something they have to do something with, and it puts them in the position of describing their own situation rather than receiving your description of yours.
There's a real mechanism underneath it. Tamir and Mitchell at Harvard found that disclosing information about yourself activates the brain's reward system, the nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental area, and that people gave up real money for the chance to do it, forgoing around 17% of their potential earnings in one experiment. Getting a potential client talking about their own situation isn't a stalling tactic. It's the part of the call they will enjoy most.
What questions uncover what solving the problem is worth to a potential client?
Value questions ask why the work is important to the client, rather than what the work contains. Scope questions tell you what to quote. Value questions tell you what a yes is worth to them, and that's the information a proposal has to answer.
The questions I ask in step one of my system:
- What's prompting you to look for a solution right now? The arrival question. It surfaces the trigger, and triggers carry urgency.
- How is this affecting things? Moves the problem from an abstraction to a cost somebody is carrying.
- What's this costing you? Names the number, or gets close enough that price has a frame later.
- What do you want the future to look like? The outcome in their words, which becomes the outcome in your proposal.
- What happens if this problem isn't solved? The do-nothing question, and the one most consultants skip.
While they answer, listen for the magic words: the phrasing that tells you which problem they walked in the door with. I call the presenting problem the thing they name first, and it's what your work has to point at. It's also the same listening that tells you whether this is someone you want to work with, which matters as much as whether they want to work with you.
How do I get past the first, surface-level answer?
You get past the surface-level answer by staying with the question you already asked. The first answer to any question is the easiest one available, and the information worth having sits one layer under it.
The two phrases that do it
"Tell me more about that." "Say more." Both are short, neither sounds like an interrogation, and both signal that you're still listening.
The silence problem
The average person in a sales conversation waits two or three seconds before jumping in. A provocative question can take eight to ten seconds to answer, so the gap you're rushing to fill is the person thinking. Lean back. Let it sit.
Why it feels so hard
Filling silence feels like being helpful, and jumping in with a solution feels like proving you can do the work. Both instincts cost you the same thing: the answer you asked for. This is where the peer mindset earns its keep, because you're evaluating them as much as they're evaluating you, and you're not grateful to be in the room.
What should I ask about how a company makes decisions?
Ask how the decision gets made inside the client's organization while you're still on the first call. This is the most overlooked and most valuable part of the conversation, because your next move depends on the answer.
Three questions get you there:
- "How does this typically go?" Tells you the shape and the timeline.
- "Where are you in this process?" Tells you whether they're scoping, comparing, or ready.
- "Who needs to be involved here?" Tells you whose questions a proposal has to survive when you're not in the room.
The answers decide your next move. If they're ready, you write a proposal. If a stakeholder you have never met has to approve it, that changes how the sale gets run and it's worth knowing now rather than in six weeks. Then take the next step onto your own plate, because your clients are busy and won't do anything that feels like work. When the next step is another conversation, book it before you both hang up.
Leah's take
Most women I work with prepare for a first call by getting ready to talk. They rehearse how to describe the work, what to say about their background, how to handle the moment it turns to price. Then the call happens, they perform, and afterward they can't tell whether it went well. The ones who tell me they're great on calls are usually the ones who stopped performing.
Flip it. Your job on that call is to listen and ask. Listening mode on. Stick with the question. Listen for the magic words. And resist the urge to solve the problem, which is the hardest one, because solving it is how you've always shown you're good.
Here's the part that surprised me when I learned it: diagnosing provides more value than solving does. When you take what you heard and reflect it back with your expertise layered on, "let me see if I have this right," people feel understood. They conclude that if a first conversation feels like this, the work must be worth having. You've given them clarity. You haven't given away the solution.
That's the whole move, and it's learnable. It has nothing to do with being a salesperson.
