I'm not a fan of "getting to know you" calls. 

Those are the ones where someone reaches out and says that they'd "love to connect to hear more about what you do" ...

Or they say "Hey, I'd love to talk with you about something - do you have a few minutes for a call?". 

Some people swear they're good for building relationships, but let me explain my stance: 

For the first year of my coaching business, I did at least 300 of these calls. Almost every day I had a "getting to know you" call, and many days I had multiple ones. 

So conservatively speaking, I spent 300 hours in year #1 doing them. 

And how much business did I get from them? 

Very little (I could have done a lot more with 300 hours of concentrated effort on my business). 

So as the years have gone on, I've changed my approach (hat tip to my friend David Ralph for this trick) ...

When someone approaches me with a vague request for a call, I ask them to send me an email with what it's regarding.  And then I can decide whether to do a call or not. 

More often than not, they don't send the email and I've saved myself an hour. Or they send over a copied and pasted sales pitch that I'm not interested in, and I've saved myself the hassle as well. 

(Yes, there are rare times like once this week when it led to a call with someone who has a service that I'm interested in)

I know that some people will disagree with me on this. I'll hear "I've made some great friends this way Marc!", or "I've gotten referrals this way".

Ok, but if you worked out the ROI for the hundreds (or thousands?) of hours was it worth it? 

Coaches have to maximize every hour possible, and fluffy calls aren't the way to do that. 

I may sound like a crotchety old man with my opinion, but I stand by it. 

If you want to get smart about how you're running your coaching business (and get more clients), here's a better way to spend your time:  

Marc