Anyone else tired of intro calls that feel pointless 5 minutes in?

I run a small B2B team and for the longest time I just said yes to meetings, intro calls, quick chat, hiring screens, connecting with random inbound ask.

Half the time I had realized the first 5 minutes that it was a bad fit, but you're already there for 30 minutes and you have to go through the motions.

And it started add up more than I expected.

What changed things for me was not jumping into the calls first.

Instead, I started collecting context asynchronously before agreeing to a meeting, basically a short back-and-forth where the other person explains what they want, what problem they are solving, and I get to understand why this call will make sense to me.

A few things I noticed with this path:

• Fewer calls overall
• People who weren't serious dropped off on their own
• The calls I did take were highly focused
• Hiring screens become way less draining

I didn't stop doing meetings, I just stopped doing them too early.

And was reading this somewhere, some people call this approach un-meet, an async first conversation before a live meeting.

Not claiming this is some magic solution, but it worked better than I expected for sales, hiring, and random inbound asks.

Curious if anyone else trying to do something similar or have another ways to cut down on useless calls without being rude about it.