Call plan
An agenda built for one outcome: leave the call with a second meeting that has the budget-holder in it.
Thirty seconds on who you are, then hand her the structure and get her consent to it. Consent is what stops it drifting into a product monologue.
She found you and booked herself. Something caused that. Ask, then stop talking — do not fill the pause.
Follow with: "and why now?" Timing is the difference between a project and a browse.
Ten minutes, her talking. You are after numbers, history and the internal politics:
The "what stopped it" question is the valuable one. She has been at the firm since 1992 — if a partner or an adviser has killed this before, she knows, and you need that today rather than in October.
Answer only what she actually raised. The frame to reach for, if it fits what she has said:
Then how it works in three sentences: parents keep their own nursery, the firm holds a compliant partnership with each one, and the platform carries the paperwork, payroll figures and the evidence trail.
They are a law firm with an in-house tax practice. They will find HMRC's warning on workplace nurseries — a rival firm has published on it. Get there first.
The warning targets employers who fund a scheme and take no part in running it. The whole design — parents as employer representatives, recorded governance, the audit pack — exists to answer that. Offer the written compliance note for their tax partner.
Karen advises. Tracy Foley, Head of People & Culture, holds the budget. One question tests whether Karen can carry this and tells you the real objection:
Then land the next step before you hang up — a date, in both calendars, with Tracy invited. Not "I'll send something over."
Ten of the thirty minutes are hers before you say anything about the product, and the questions are about her mechanics, not our features. Discovery is diagnosis; a call that feels good but produces no buyer action is not progress.
Closing Foundry: most B2B deals are lost in the first meeting, not the close — "interest is not a deal"The agenda gives you room for roughly a dozen real questions. That is deliberate — it is close to the observed gap between strong and weak discovery, and it is why the middle block is protected from the demo.
Sendspark, Aug 2026: top reps ask ~12–15 questions; bottom performers fewer than sixWe already know they fund enhanced leave and sabbaticals and offer nothing on childcare. The call tests that read rather than starting cold — which is faster, and it signals you did the work before asking for her time.
SalesTap: discovery works when you walk in with a hypothesis, spend the time on the buyer's mechanics, and leave with a written next stepShe self-served off the website. Intent already exists — the only unknown is what triggered it. Every minute spent explaining before asking that burns the single piece of information no research sweep could have found.
She booked cold: no outreach, no referral, no prior contact in Slack or emailThe HMRC warning is going to surface — they have their own tax practice and it ranks on the obvious search. Raised by you at minute 21, you answer it live. Found by them on Tuesday, you are defending it by email with no one in the room.
Pinsent Masons Out-Law: "HMRC issues warning over UK's workplace nurseries"A champion has to be both willing and able to move things when you are not in the room. "What will Tracy want to see?" tests willingness and ability in one question, hands Karen a role, and surfaces the real objection while you can still respond to it.
MEDDIC champion criteria: willing AND able to advance the deal in your absenceThe last four minutes exist to convert interest into a dated commitment with the economic buyer invited. This is the single biggest swing factor in whether a first meeting advances at all.
Allston Labs: a well-run 30-minute discovery advances at 60–80%; a typical one at 20–30%Karen has to carry this to Tracy. What she carries matters — and "I spoke to their chief executive, and she answered everything" is a materially stronger thing to walk into that conversation with than a brochure from a salesperson. Most vendors would have sent someone junior to a first call. Use that: it is a real asymmetry, and it costs you nothing to let it show.
TikTok's in-house team put you through a series of grillings and you answered them in writing, in detail, well enough that the whole team said so. Walker Morris is that same interrogation with a tax practice attached — sceptical, technical, testing whether the compliance story holds. You have done this before and it went well. There is nothing they can ask on Monday that is new.
You are the reason the pack no longer says the employer has to do "deliberately little", and the reason it now states plainly that several nurseries invoice the firm and the firm pays them directly. A law firm's entire professional instinct is to probe for the overclaim. Yours is to remove it before anyone finds it. That is the rarest possible fit between a seller and this particular buyer.
She is a reward advisor. She does not need vision — she needs to know who invoices whom, what lands on payroll, what her team has to do each month and what happens when someone leaves. That is the detail you have been correcting in our own copy all week. It is exactly the register this call wants.
She went looking, found us, and put half an hour in her own diary — after thirty-four years of watching benefits come and go at that firm. You are not talking anyone into anything on Monday. You are finding out what she already wants, and showing her it exists.
Enjoy it. This is the good part of the job.
Full background — the firm, the people, the numbers, the competitor read: wm-brief.pages.dev
Halo · internal call prep · not for circulation outside the team.