Joe OviedoWhen I design the first step into a service, it’s easy to start with our own concern: “We can’t talk to everyone.” A reasonable idea follows: ask people a few questions and let them decide, based on their answers, whether to book. I like saving a call too, especially the kind where we spend twenty minutes exchanging information either of us could have sent beforehand.
But there’s another kind of twenty-minute call that does different work. Someone comes in sure they need one thing and, before hanging up, can explain why they need something else. If I replace that call with a questionnaire, I might also remove the moment when they would have understood what they were trying to solve.
The difference isn’t how many questions we ask. It’s what decision we want the person to be able to make afterward.
The answer fits in a checkbox. What it means may not.
Imagine I’m offering two ways to help someone with a newsletter. One is a session to review an issue they’ve already written. The other is longer work to decide what to write about, who it’s for, and how to sustain it without losing the entire week to it. I want people to be able to choose without speaking to me first.
I could ask, “Do you already publish a newsletter?” Someone says yes and adds that they send an email every Friday. At first that sounds like a good fit for an issue review. They have material, readers, and something concrete to work on.
But when I ask to see what went out last Friday and what they plan to send next, I find out the email goes out on time because they promised it would. The last issue was a list of links. The next was going to be a reflection on their work, but they don’t know whether the people who signed up for links want to read that. Their difficulty isn’t finishing an issue. It’s deciding what they want readers to expect every Friday.
I’d read “I publish every week” as a sign that this decision was already made. It wasn’t. If I send them straight to an editing session, they can leave with a better email and sit down the following week facing the same problem.
Someone else might say they haven’t started publishing but show up with a first issue, a list of people who asked to receive it, and a clear idea of what they want to send. They just want to know whether the first issue delivers what they promised. They don’t need a session to discover what their newsletter is about. They need someone to read the email.
What I’d ask in writing
After seeing those two situations, I wouldn’t immediately add ten questions about frequency, list size, and tools. I’d change the first question. Instead of “Do you already publish?” I’d try “What do you want to be able to decide when we’re done?” I’d give options someone could recognize without knowing my services: “I want to know whether this email is ready to send” and “I still don’t know what would make sense to send regularly.”
If they choose the first and can share a draft, we probably don’t need a preliminary call. I can explain what we’ll review, how much time we have, and what we won’t cover. They can read that and decide whether it helps. Making them book a call just to hear it again doesn’t improve anything.
I’d also leave a third option: “I’m not sure which.” Not as a required step toward a sale. Some people have a draft and still don’t know whether it’s worth revising. I could ask them to share the email and tell me what worries them about sending it. If it’s “I don’t know whether the subject line makes sense,” that may be enough. If it’s “I don’t know whether I want to keep writing about this,” I’d rather talk before charging to review the copy.
What I’d do in a conversation that doesn’t fit in a form
I don’t want to spend twenty minutes reading back what they already answered. I want us to look at something together. In this case I’d open the last issue and ask what they wanted a reader to be able to do, think, or understand after reading it. Then we’d look at the next draft. Sometimes the difference reveals a decision nobody has put on the table.
We might decide an issue review makes sense after all. We might try three emails on the same subject before committing to something longer. Or the sensible thing might be not to hire anyone yet. A good first conversation can end there. If the person understands what they need to decide, it already did something useful.
I still want to save everyone calls, myself included. Now, before turning a conversation into a questionnaire, I ask what I’m removing. If we’re only exchanging information, I’d rather write it down. If we still need to look at what’s happening to know which question is worth asking, I’d rather talk.
← Back to the Journal