Jesse Pujji shares an opening question for sales calls: "What led you to take this call?" It surfaces prospect motivation and reveals whether they're self-selling, indifferent, or hostile. Knowing which type you're dealing with lets you adjust your approach before losing them.
Now, this is what I call the magic question. Everybody start using this. I'd love to just know, like, what led you to take this call? Why did you choose to take this call? And you all have sales meetings coming up. Start with that question. A few different things will have happened. Most often the person says, well, you know, I'm a private equity guy and we're always asking questions about marketing and no one can explain them to us. And we heard you guys do good work and we thought this would be a valuable thing. And they've literally sold themselves on why they're taking the call. They're doing your job for you. 2 out of 10 times they're like, I don't know, you just showed up on my calendar. I'm busy. What are we doing here? And then you're like, okay, this guy's pretty cold. 2 out of 10 times they're like a little hostile. Like everyone's had that call where they're like, ah, you know, this is actually a waste of my time. But even that, knowing that, and you know, it'll lead me oftentimes to pivoting going, well, what would be valuable to spend with your time in the next 20 minutes? You want to know that the second you lose their attention, you lose it.
