What to Ask in Your First Call With a Potential Business Partner

A first call with a potential partner or connector is usually short — often intentionally

so — and it's easy to spend the whole thing listening to a pitch instead of actually

learning what you need to know. A few deliberate questions change that.

"What do you not handle?" is one of the most useful questions in any first conversation. A

credible person answers it directly and specifically. A less credible one gets vague, or

answers as if the question were "what *can't* you do" rather than "what do you choose not

to do" — a subtle but telling difference.

Direct claims about past results are easy to make and hard to verify on a first call. More

useful: ask about a specific situation that didn't go well, and how it was handled. Anyone

with real experience has one; how they describe it tells you more than any success story

would.

Instead of "can you help with X," try "how would you approach X." The first invites a yes.

The second requires them to actually reason through the problem out loud, which is much

harder to fake convincingly in the moment.

A first call should end with clarity on what happens next, not just enthusiasm about what's

possible. If a conversation is all upside and no concrete next step, that's worth noticing.

It's easy to forget that a first call is also a chance to learn about *risk* — theirs, not

just yours. Asking "what would make you decline something like this" is a good way to

understand where their own boundaries are, and whether those boundaries match what you'd

actually need from the relationship.

This is part of why Hammerin's first meeting is deliberately short, free, and framed as a

fit conversation rather than a pitch — it's meant to be used exactly this way, by both

sides, before anything is committed.