The email came in fifteen minutes before the meeting.
“Sorry, our priorities have shifted. We’ll have to cancel.”
No new date. No real reason. Just a polite exit from a meeting that, looking back, was never going to happen.
I’d held that slot open for a week. Turned down something else to keep it free. And it evaporated in two sentences.
All of which, frankly, was my own fault.
The meeting didn’t evaporate fifteen minutes before. It died a week earlier, in the room, at the moment we agreed to meet again.
Tell me if this resonates.
The first meeting went well.
Head nods all around. “That makes sense.”
You made a couple of recommendations and asked how they’d like to proceed.
They said something like, “We need to talk it over internally.” Or “I’ll run it past my business partner.” Or “Let me share this with the team.”
So you ask how long they needed and suggested putting a follow-up date in the diary.
They agreed. Or at least they didn’t say no.
Which is where it gets dangerous.
You walked away thinking, “Great, we booked a follow-up. We’re moving forward.”
It feels like progress. It isn’t.
Here’s why.
They just told you they need to think. Your job is to find out whether that’s real or a polite way of letting you down. So before you reach for the diary, ask:
- “What specifically do you need to think through?”
- “What’s still unclear?”
- “Who else needs to be on board, and what would they want to know?”
- “If we did meet again, what would make it worth your time?”
- “How can I help you make the call?”
Now you know whether a second meeting actually moves the decision forward, or whether you’re booking a slot that was never going to happen.
Skip those questions and you get the email. Fifteen minutes before. “Our priorities have shifted.”
And yes, that’s happened to me. Mostly my own fault for not qualifying harder.
Which usually comes back to something else. Not enough prospects in the pipeline. When the pipeline is thin, you start needing the next deal, and needing it makes you pull back. You take the weak “yes” because the strong question feels too risky.
That’s a system problem, and it’s fixable. I can help you build your pipeline as well as systemize your sales conversations to minimize the risk of this happening
In the meantime, the discipline is simple. Don’t book the next meeting and call it progress. Ask more questions and find out what’s really going on.
