"Oh shit. I forgot to book the next meeting."

"I got out the door, got in the car, and about 20 minutes down the road it hit me. Oh shit. I didn't book the next meeting!"

That's how a sales coaching client opened our call last week.

Dave's been in cybersecurity for 30 years. Co-founded his MSP. Knows his vertical, knows the players in it, and has forgotten more about the technology than anyone else in that room will ever learn.

He'd just walked out of an opportunity with no next step on the calendar.

And it was a good one. A 35-person law firm that doubled headcount last year and plans to double again. They'd hired an in-house IT guy — didn't work out. Now they're back with a provider they don't like, month to month. They asked him to come out and look at their environment.

When he brought up security, the woman running the meeting told him flat out: "I have no idea where we're at with security."

That's about as clean a setup as an onsite gets.

This is the part that should bother you.

He researched the firm. Researched the principals. Researched the specific people he was meeting with. Brought his best tech along so they could actually get under the hood.

BAMFAM — book a meeting from a meeting. The rule that we never leave a sales meeting without the next one scheduled with our prospect. It was new to him when we started drilling it a couple of months ago, and he's been executing it like clockwork. Every Zoom. Every Teams call. Hasn't missed one since.

This one was in person. New room, new dynamic, and the thing he'd been doing flawlessly for weeks just didn't happen.

It happened twice on that call, actually.

The woman he was meeting with is a CPA. Somewhere in the middle she told him to make sure his pricing was "aggressive" — something about sharpening his pencil.

That's a door swinging wide open. What does "aggressive" mean? What are they spending on IT now? What's the budget for this? Instead he laughed and said "that's the CPA in you," and the conversation rolled on.

I asked him, "When she said that — did you think it and not say it? Or did you not think to ask?"

Two completely different problems. They get coached two completely different ways.

If you thought it and didn't say it, that's people pleasing. Some part of you decided their comfort mattered more than your job.

If you never thought it at all, it's not committed deeply enough — or something else in the room was eating all the attention you had.

His answer: "Didn't think it. Didn't even think it."

That's the second one. He knew the step cold. He just didn't reach for it.

Preparation happens before you walk in. Recall happens while you're in there. Two different skills, and it's the second one that fails.

Dave solved this himself, right there on the call. He mentioned he’s an aviation guy.

"In aviation there are memory items. When there's an emergency, certain things have to be committed to memory. They drill it in and drill it in and drill it in. So when the shit's hitting the fan, you go straight to your memory items."

Here's what I didn't know until I looked it up.

On a Boeing 737, when the cabin loses pressure at altitude — one of the worst things that can happen to an airplane — the memory items are two lines long: Put the oxygen masks on and set them to 100%. Establish crew communication.

That's it. Everything else comes out of a book once the crew can breathe and talk.

Two items, for a genuine emergency, in an industry that has spent a hundred years figuring out what survives contact with a moving airplane. They triage down to the absolute core, because that's all a human being can execute under pressure.

And it isn't only for emergencies. Before every landing, general aviation pilots run GUMPS — gas, undercarriage, mixture, propeller, switches. Five items. Every single landing, no matter how many hours you have.

Pilots flying fixed-gear planes still say "undercarriage, fixed" out loud, even though there's nothing to lower. Because the habit is the point.

Having a 50 page playbook that describes how to run a sales meeting is helpful. It establishes best practices, provides a foundation to coach against, and helps train new people.

But like Tyson said, "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." Once a conversation gets real in a sales meeting, it can't be scripted. The playbook doesn't walk in the room with you. Which is why you need something else more practical for actually running live meetings consistently: a short list per meeting. Just like a pilot.

The question that builds that checklist for you: what can I not walk out of this meeting without?

Qualifying call — do I know whether this is a real fit, and what specifically disqualifies it?

Discovery — do I have the pain and not just the problem, what's driving urgency, who else touches this decision, what their buying process looks like, where they are with their current provider, and what they're spending today?

Assessment — do I know what findings actually connect back to something they told me hurts?

Proposal — did I ask for a decision, and do I know what's standing between here and yes?

And of course, is the next call scheduled for every stage. Because in a consultative sale you're not selling the deal in that room anyway — you're selling the next step. Walk out without one and all you've got is a nice conversation.

Five to nine per stage. That range isn't arbitrary — it's what Atul Gawande landed on in The Checklist Manifesto, working with Boeing's checklist designer. Nine is about where working memory taps out and people start skipping items.

The Boeing emergency list is down at two because nobody's reading anything at that moment. Yours gets read before you walk in and again before you walk out, so you've got more room than a pilot losing cabin pressure.

Twenty-five is a wish list, not a memory item.

Dave didn't lose it because he hadn't learned the step. He lost it because he'd learned it well enough to stop thinking about it, in a room different enough that the habit hadn't been tested there yet.

Laminate the damn thing. Keep it in the car. Read it before you walk in and again before you walk out.

The best meeting you have all year is the one where you'll need it most.

Adios,

Ray

P.S. — I told Dave to quit beating himself up about it, and I'd tell you the same. You're going to forget things. You're human, and you're not landing a plane with two hundred people on board.

Catching it at all means you've got a process and you're running it on purpose. So kick yourself in the ass, then pick up the phone before you're out of the parking lot. Most of what you missed, you can still go get.

The person who catches it 20 minutes down the road is a hell of a lot closer than the guy who never catches it at all.