Running a discovery call, qualification frameworks, and mapping business pain to technical capability.
3 questions in Presales & Solutioning.
Set an agenda, ask about the business outcome and current process before any technology, and use the call to qualify rather than to collect requirements: establish who decides, what changed to make this the quarter they act, and what would have to be proven, then confirm it in a written recap.
Work out whether there is no project, a project owned by somebody else, or a champion nobody internally listens to, because each has a different next move. Then make one specific ask that requires other people, and treat a refusal as the qualification answer. It also connects multi threading to the point an interviewer is testing.
Treat the contradiction as information rather than an error to correct: work out whether the stated requirement is stale, a proxy for a driver nobody will say aloud, or a political commitment, then test it against something already decided, and put both readings in writing with a price on each.