An enquiry arrives saying that sales are down and asking whether the firm can help.
The firm books a discovery call. It takes forty five minutes, during which they establish that the business has no data on where the decline is, that the person enquiring is a marketing manager with no budget, and that a decision would need two other people.
The call was the right conversation with the wrong person at the wrong time. The firm spends another three weeks getting to a proposal that never had a buyer.
The first failure: the enquiry form asks for a message
A single free text box produces a symptom and nothing else. What the form asks for is what determines the quality of every lead that arrives.
The second failure: the discovery call is the first step
Forty five minutes of senior time spent establishing facts that a structured intake collects in three minutes, on every enquiry regardless of quality.
The third failure: the symptom is mistaken for the problem
Sales are down is a symptom. Whether it is pricing, product, market, sales process or something else is the actual question, and the buyer usually does not know.
The fourth failure: nobody asks what has already been tried
The most useful single question available. It reveals the real history, the internal politics and whether the firm is the third attempt at something.
The fifth failure: authority is never established
Whether the person enquiring can buy, who else decides and what the approval route is. This single question predicts conversion better than any other.
The sixth failure: budget is avoided out of politeness
Which is the failure described in qualifying by budget without being pushy, and which costs firms weeks of senior time.
The seventh failure: the timescale is not asked
An enquiry with no deadline behaves entirely differently from one with a board meeting in six weeks, and the response should differ accordingly.
The eighth failure: the definition of success is not captured
What would have to be true in six months for this to have been worth it. Buyers who can answer this are serious and buyers who cannot need a different conversation.
The ninth failure: the reply takes days
By which time a competitor has had the discovery call, which is the cost quantified in what one lost consulting engagement really costs.
The tenth failure: the vague enquiry is dismissed
Some of the best engagements begin with a symptom. Dismissing vagueness throws away good work alongside bad.
The eleventh failure: the intake is one size fits all
An overseas enquiry has different questions attached, which is the ground in international prospects and consulting enquiries.
The twelfth failure: the pattern is never reviewed
Firms that look at their enquiry history find the same three symptoms repeating, and could have built a structured intake for each of them years ago.
The fix: structure the intake before anybody spends an hour
An assistant that asks what the symptom is, what has been tried, who is affected, what success looks like, who decides and on what timescale delivers a scoped enquiry rather than a sentence about sales being down. The same pattern in other sectors appears in enquiries from businesses with no budget and no brief. Start at try, see features, and the sector view sits under consultants.