No. In a call with a prospect I may not be able to answer 50 percent of the questions, and that is fine. I do not say anything wrong on the spot. I look into the question properly afterwards and come back to it in the next call. The person who asks the questions leads the conversation.
Anyone who sells AI consulting, or is just starting out, quickly believes they must know everything in the first conversation or they will look unprofessional. I see it differently. I run an AI agency from Dubai, and in calls with prospects plenty of questions stay open for me too. A coaching client who wanted to position himself as an AI consultant was worried about exactly this, so I explained to him how I handle it. In a podcast I also said that since I started in AI I have not yet sold a single project whose delivery I fully knew in advance. The two belong together, and this post covers both.
When you do not know the answer, check it and come back
I cannot answer a lot of the questions prospects ask me on the spot, and it is more than people would imagine. I told my coaching client that in a single conversation it can be half of them, 50 percent. What matters is what happens next. I do not claim something just to sound sure. I look at the question carefully afterwards and pick it up again in the next call.
To do that I take the recording of the call to Claude, bring the things I had no answer to, and run a brainstorming session to find out whether a solution exists or not. The client gets a checked answer instead of a guessed one, and I get the time I need to give a clean answer.
Whoever asks the questions leads the call
My coaching client explained a lot in words, and I told him he would achieve far more with questions. Whoever asks leads, and whoever asks the questions gets almost no counter questions back. That is one reason open questions rarely corner me in a call.
I showed him what it looks like with an example. You do not tell the other person that you are the complete professional and will build everything for them with AI. You ask how a task works at the moment and whether it is a pain point. If they say it costs them a lot of effort every time, the next question is: AI could do that, were you aware of that? The call then turns to the client's problem, and the client knows that problem better than I do anyway.
Nobody proposes a solution in a first call
I once had a coaching call with an experienced developer and asked him whether, in a first call, I have to give the client a roadmap straight away or name a price. His answer, as I pass it on: no professional would propose any solution in a first call.
He steps back, thanks the client for the information and says he will look at everything in peace. If he has counter questions, he gets in touch. After that he builds a precise plan so the result is right for the client, and comes back to show what the outcome will be. I handed the same sequence to my coaching client, because it takes the pressure off the first call. You do not have to deliver anything that day. You have to listen and understand.
I sell projects I do not fully understand yet
On a podcast I was asked how often I had sold something before the solution existed. About three months into running an AI agency, my answer was that I had not yet sold a single project whose delivery I could be 100 percent sure of. I added that I could no longer imagine selling something I understand to 100 percent, and that anyone who has the product finished before talking to the client has probably waited too long.
With my first and second client it felt different. After saying yes I thought: I have agreed to this and I do not yet know how I will do it. Today that is normal, because I know it works even when I do not know the route in detail, and with one or two questions to Claude I have the answer. To me this is mostly a question of mindset, and many people get stuck in analysis paralysis instead of selling.
Conclusion: you do not need every answer in the first call
You do not have to answer every question in the first call. Someone who says honestly what they still need to check, and returns in the next call with a verified answer, sells better than someone who asserts something wrong in the moment. That includes asking questions and listening to the client instead of presenting a solution straight away, and it includes taking on a project even when you do not yet know the route in detail, as long as you know it can be done. As a next step I suggest you record your next first call, collect the open questions afterwards and let Claude check which of them can be solved. In the second call your client then gets a plan built on checked answers.