Stop overthinking your pre-call planning
By Brad Hawley, Head of Client Engagement | 4 min read
Here’s a simple pre-call planning framework: list three questions you’ll ask, in order. You’ll most likely deviate from questions two and three once the conversation gets going — but at least you’ve walked into the meeting with a general structure in mind.
Honestly? Most of the time, the only pre-call planning I do is knowing what my opening question will be. That’s it.
Because I’m well-versed in my topic — the subject of the sales meeting — I know that if I ask just the right question, the tennis match begins. The first question is the first serve. If it’s a good one, you’re in a rally before either side realizes it.
This approach makes the meeting feel conversational rather than transactional. It impresses the audience if the question is sharp, and it immediately establishes that this isn’t going to be a one-sided pitch — it’s going to be a dialogue. The prospect is going to do a lot of the talking.
In my experience, prospects would rather talk than listen to someone talking at them. Your opening question gives them permission to do exactly that.
At one point in my career, I sold intellectual property management solutions. Companies with large patent portfolios need every patent maintained with paperwork and fees — called patent maintenance fees in the US and patent annuities in foreign jurisdictions.
My focus was law firms. Many held massive patent portfolios on behalf of clients who weren’t sophisticated enough to have their own IP department. But law firms hated managing these portfolios. The work was tedious, the deadlines were unforgiving, and the risk was enormous. Miss a single deadline and you don’t just lose a client — you might get sued for losing their million-dollar idea.
The opening question:
“Have you had any conversations about mitigating the risk of managing your clients’ patent portfolios?”
That one question accomplished everything. It signaled that I understood their world. It surfaced a pain point they lived with daily. And it opened the door for them to talk — about their fears, their frustrations, their near-misses. My job from that point forward was simply to convey that we could eliminate the firm’s risk, and then talk very little for the rest of the meeting.
It took time to get to this point. But looking back, much of my success in that role was tied directly to that opening question. Sales happened. Quota achievement happened. Financial rewards happened. Not because of a complex playbook or a 30-slide deck — but because one well-crafted question set the entire conversation in motion.
1
Great opening question
→
Prospect opens up
→
Sale follows naturally
You don’t need a 20-page pre-call plan. You need one killer opening question — one that demonstrates you understand the prospect’s world, surfaces a real pain point, and turns a pitch into a conversation. Nail that, and the rest tends to take care of itself.
The ability to open a conversation with the right question isn’t something you can teach in a week. It’s a profile trait. Talnted helps you find the sellers who already have it.
Get in Touch✓ Pre-call planning doesn’t need to be complicated — list three questions, but obsess over the first one.
✓ Your opening question is your first serve — it sets the tone and pace of the entire meeting.
✓ A great first question signals expertise, surfaces pain, and turns a pitch into a conversation.
✓ Prospects would rather talk than be talked at — give them the opening to do so.
✓ Mastery of your subject matter is what makes a single-question strategy work.