<aside> 📋 Frequency: Trigger-Based | Time: 30 min | Trigger: When a qualified prospect books a diagnostic call

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Diagnostic calls are where engagements are won or lost — and most consultants walk in with nothing more than a LinkedIn scan and good intentions. Without a structured prep routine, you default to generic discovery questions, miss the prospect's real constraint, and lose the engagement before the call ends.

Prerequisites

• The prospect's booking confirmation with any intake information they provided
• Your pipeline tracker (CRM, spreadsheet, or equivalent) with the prospect's history
• Access to any prior correspondence or referral context

Procedure

1. Open the prospect's record in your pipeline tracker and review all prior touchpoints — referral source, initial inquiry, any emails exchanged.
2. Run the Diagnostic Call Prep skill with the prospect's industry, company size, and any known pain points as input.
3. Review the skill output — it generates a tailored question sequence, potential constraints to probe, and red flags to watch for.
4. Identify the prospect's likely constraint category based on available information. If the constraint is unclear, prioritize open-ended diagnostic questions over assumptive ones.
5. Prepare your engagement framing — the 60-second explanation of how you work, calibrated to the prospect's situation.
6. Block 15 minutes of quiet time immediately before the call to review your prep and clear your head.

Expected Outcome

A complete call prep brief with tailored diagnostic questions, a hypothesis about the prospect's primary constraint, and a clear engagement framing — ready to execute the moment the call starts.

<aside> ⚠️ Common mistakes:

— Prepping the pitch instead of the diagnosis. The diagnostic call isn't a sales presentation. If you walk in with a solution before you've identified the constraint, the prospect hears "generic consultant," not "someone who understands my problem."

— Skipping prep for referrals. Referred prospects feel warm, so you wing it. But the referral earned you the meeting — not the engagement. Underprepared calls waste the social capital the referrer spent on you.

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