How to make the most of your hour

An advisory call puts two strangers in a room for an hour with one problem between them. Whether that hour turns out to be worth many times its price, or just a pleasant conversation, mostly comes down to how both people prepare and how honest they're prepared to be. Some practical advice for each side.

For clients

Book around a decision. "Tell me about supply chains" leads to an hour of generalities. "Our biggest supplier contract is up for renewal and I don't know whether to renegotiate or split the volume: what would you look at first?" gives the expert something to work on before the call even starts. If you can name the decision, the hour gets spent on your situation instead of on background.

Take the brief seriously. The few sentences you write when booking are all the expert has to prepare with. Cover what's happening, what you're weighing up, what's at stake and what a good outcome from the call would look like. Rough numbers (revenue, team size, timescale) save ten minutes of orientation questions at the start.

Ask about their mistakes. This is the thing you can't get from a report or a course. What did they get wrong the first time? What do people in your position tend to underestimate? What would make them walk away from a deal like yours? Experienced people answer these questions well, and the answers tend to be where the value is.

Give context briskly, then listen. A good pattern is ten minutes of you talking, then the expert driving with questions. If you find yourself still explaining at the half-hour mark, you're using expensive time on things the brief could have carried.

Finish with actions. Keep the last five minutes for "what would you do this week, in my position?" and write down the answer. If the call was useful, book the follow-up while everything is fresh rather than in a month when it isn't.

For experts

Prepare a little, deliberately. Read the brief when it arrives and again before the call. Form a working theory about what's really going on and note the questions that would confirm or kill it. Nobody expects slides. They do expect you to have thought about their situation before the clock starts.

Look for the question behind the question. People often book with the question they can say out loud rather than the one that's bothering them. "Should I renegotiate this contract?" sometimes means "I'm frightened of this supplier and don't know how much leverage I have." A couple of gentle probes (what happens if you do nothing? why now?) usually get to the real conversation early.

Have an opinion. The client can get a balanced list of options anywhere. What they can't get is "in your position I'd do this, for these reasons, and here's what would change my mind." Say it plainly when you believe it. Hedging everything feels safer but leaves the client no better off than before the call.

Be clear about the edges of your knowledge. "That part is outside my experience, so don't lean on my view there" costs you nothing and makes everything else you say more believable.

Manage the clock. The client won't. It's your job. Ten minutes from the end, start pulling it together: what you heard, what you'd do, in what order, and anything you'd avoid. If there's clearly a second conversation in it, say so plainly. Repeat bookings follow from being useful, and from nothing else.

One rule for both sides

The hour works in proportion to how honest each person is willing to be: the client about the messy version of the situation, the expert about what they actually think. Politeness is free elsewhere. Here it's expensive.