[vicbrooker]

I haven't seen anyone mention this, but the guy doing the email is almost certainly paid (or at least seen as successful) when he organises a face-to-face meeting. There's a fundamental imbalance of incentives here: the Sales Guy wants to get paid for taking time to sit down and negotiate, and the Programmer wants to get paid for running his business.

I think the major inefficiency is here: "My time is very limited, maybe you could first tell me roughly what this would be about?"

I would personally ask if they're most interested in features/option/pricepoint A,B or C. If it's not clear on the context I would ask a direct question for the three topics he would like to talk about.

Anything that steers the conversation towards what you want: whether this partnership is something you're interested in. At least this ways there's actually some motivation for him to actually tell you what's in it for your business.

[edit] the end was cut off for some reason

[ivix]

There's a good insight here that bears repeating:

Sales guy is paid to talk on the phone.

Programmer is paid to program.

So you can treat talking on the phone as a reward/incentive for good behaviour by sales guy. "I'll be happy to talk with you on the phone if you can first summarise your proposal".

[hagbardgroup]

In bad sales orgs, the sales people may also be held to a contact quota that does not take into account their close ratio. He may be just trying to pad his contact numbers.

[vicbrooker]

...or shotgunning, and trying a lot of weak leads at once.

[chrismcb]

The thing is, in this particular case the programmer appears to be the sole proprietor of the company. The "programmer" doesn't get paid to program. The sole proprietor gets paid when he makes sales.