The definition
This is the only page that decides whether you are charged $99. It is written in full, in public, because a business that charges per meeting and is vague about the word "meeting" is selling you a fog.
We charge for a meeting that happened, with a real decision maker inside the brief you signed off, who knew who we were and why when they agreed to it.
Six tests. All six, or it is not billed.
A first name, a last name, a company, a title, and a LinkedIn profile or work email we can show you. Not "someone from operations".
Sector, size and geography, written in your words before anything went out. Outside it is our mistake and our cost.
Either their yes is the yes, or their yes is what makes it happen. A researcher collecting options is not a decision maker.
A date, a time, an accepted invite. "Sure, send me something" is not a meeting.
No bait and no borrowed name. If someone turns up expecting something we did not say, it does not count even if the meeting goes well.
We bill on held, never on booked. A no-show is free. A reschedule that then holds counts once.
One thing this cuts both ways on
If you do not give us the exclusion list, you cannot later refuse a meeting for being on it. It is the first thing we ask for and nothing sends until it arrives.
Flag it within five working days of the meeting. We look at the thread, the invite, and the recording where there is one. If any of the six tests fails, it comes off the invoice and no argument is needed.
Flag it after five days and it still comes off the invoice the first time. After that we talk. The bias is deliberate, because arguing with you about $99 costs both of us more than $99.
Booking a meeting is easy and getting one held is hard. An agency that bills on booked gets paid for the easy half and has no reason to care whether anyone turns up. Billing on held puts our money on the same side of the table as yours.