Decide at the start of the call that you'll decide at the end, then do it: before anyone hangs up, agree on one next step with a date, even when the honest next step is "not now." Write two lines about the call the same day. Then once a week, sit down with every open conversation and give each one a move. Most first meetings that go nowhere were good meetings. They just ended on "let's stay in touch," and nobody owned what came after.
On almost every campaign I run, I can tell you how many people agreed to a call. I usually can't tell you what happened on it.
On one account this fall there were about a dozen booked calls with no outcome written down anywhere. On another, the column for call results was filled in carefully through the spring and has been blank since. In both cases the owner is capable, and in at least one case is closing work from those calls. The outcomes are simply where outcomes live in a small firm: in the owner's head, alongside forty other things.
I'm not exempt. This fall I was on a prospect call of my own that ran most of an hour, went well by every measure I'd use, and ended without anyone mentioning price or a date for the next conversation. We followed up afterward. The momentum from that hour never fully came back.
Why good meetings stall
A first meeting in an expert firm usually goes pleasantly. Two competent people talk about a real problem. There's rapport, often some shared history. At the forty-five minute mark, both people have somewhere else to be, and the natural ending is warm and vague: "This was great, let me send you a few things and we'll reconnect."
That ending feels polite. It's also where most conversion is lost, for a structural reason. The person who would normally push for a next step, a business developer whose whole job is the next step, doesn't exist in a firm of eight. The owner is the expert, and experts are trained to be helpful rather than to ask for a commitment. Asking feels like selling, and most owners I work with got into their field partly to avoid that.
Then the call ends, the next client meeting starts, and the notes don't get written. A week later the owner remembers the conversation as promising. A month later it's a vague good feeling. Nobody can say who needs a second touch, what the person actually said about timing, or whether the outreach that produced the call is working at all. The owner ends up judging the whole effort on a mood, and moods run pessimistic in a slow month.
What I do, in the order it happens
Before the call. Spend five minutes rereading the thread that led to the meeting. Note anything they told you about timing, budget, or what changed for them. People often say why they agreed to talk, and it's easy to forget by the time you're on video.
In the first two minutes. After the hello, say plainly what the call is for and how it will end. Something like: "The point today is to understand your situation and see whether there's a reason to keep talking. At the end, can we take a minute to decide on next steps, even if the next step is no next step?" Almost nobody says no to that. It also takes the pressure off both of you, because the ending is now agreed in advance rather than sprung at the close.
In the last five minutes. Do what you said. Leave real time for it rather than squeezing it into the goodbye. Then book before you hang up, while you're both looking at your calendars. There are three honest versions:
- If there's something here: "I think there might be a fit. Would it be worth thirty minutes next week where I bring a few specific ideas for your situation?" Put it on the calendar now.
- If they're unsure: "What would be most useful as a next step? I could send you one specific thing, or we could put a time on the calendar for after you've had a chance to think." Either way, there's a date.
- If it isn't a fit or isn't the time: say so, and ask if you can check in at a specific point, after their busy season, or in the new year. That date goes on the calendar too.
"I'll send some info and we'll reconnect" is the one ending to avoid. It has no date and no owner, and it quietly hands the next move to whoever is less busy, which is nobody.
The same afternoon. Two lines in whatever you use to track conversations, or a two-minute voice note if typing won't happen. What they need. What happens next, and when. That's enough. I've stopped asking owners for full call notes, because full call notes don't get written and two lines do.
Once a week, with the owner. This is the part I've come to think matters most. Each week I sit down with the owner and go through every open conversation, one at a time: everyone who said yes, everyone who had a call, every proposal out. Each one leaves the session with a move and a date, and often the words for it, so the owner can act in a few minutes rather than composing from scratch. Sometimes the move is "wait until March." That counts.
It sounds like a status meeting. It works more like a short shift on the floor. An owner who would never sit down alone to review a pipeline will happily spend forty-five minutes working one with someone across the table, and the conversations that would have drifted get moved instead.
What to measure
Two numbers tell you whether this is working. Of the people who agreed to a call, how many actually had one. And of the calls held, how many ended with a dated next step. The first catches the leak before the meeting. The second catches this one. A firm can have plenty of good conversations and still have a poor second number, and that's usually where the clients who should have signed went.
What I haven't figured out
The weekly session works well while it's new. I don't yet know how well it holds once the owner is through a heavy stretch of client work, which is exactly when it's most needed. The client I've seen do best with it already followed up well on their own, and the results show it. I'm less sure how much the session can carry for an owner who doesn't, and I'd rather say that than pretend otherwise.
I'm also still testing how plainly to say "no next step" out loud. Some owners find it freeing. Some hear it as giving up on a person they like. I think it's kinder than a vague promise to reconnect, and it keeps the list honest, but I hold that one loosely.
This is one of the five pipeline leaks.
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