The discovery call that qualifies and closes

You've had this call before. Someone books twenty minutes, you spend the first five on small talk, the next ten hearing a vague version of what they want, and by minute eighteen you're pitching blind because you never actually found out what the problem is costing them. It ends with "let me think about it and get back to you." Most of the time, they don't. The call didn't fail because you're bad on the phone. It failed because it had no structure, so it drifted wherever the more nervous person in the conversation steered it — and that's usually you.