Meetings Succeed or Fail

Every meeting either advances (a concrete commitment or next step) or it fails. There is no such thing as a meeting that 'went well' because they said nice things.

When a meeting starts to drift into vague positivity, the move is to push for advancement right there: ask for the intro, the trial, the preorder. Either you get it, or you surface the objection that was hiding under the compliments. Both outcomes are wins.

Meetings fail for predictable reasons: you pitched instead of listened, you asked about the future instead of the past, or you left without asking for anything. Almost every failed meeting traces back to one of those.