Have you tried disabling and re-enabling Bluetooth?
Or have you tried a spare device or headphones to test to see if it works at all?
What model were the speakers? What phone was it?
Ive noticed Bluetooth is a pain sometimes to get to work right on Windows 7, espically with iOS devices, you may just have to try a few more times.
Also, you may have to make the laptop's Bluetooth discoverable. Sometimes its discoverable on the devices but not the laptop itself. Maybe your Bluetooth settings need to be changed on the phone to make it visible for more than a certain amount of time, same goes for the laptop. (Maybe not the speakers, since its speakers. Not quite able to do that on speakers.)
In my experience, Android and headphones (Usually) seem to have no issues connecting to bluetooth on Windows 7, but iOS tends to. I have not tried speakers, as I have had no need for external speakers on a laptop. (Do note I had these experiences on a 10 year old Thinkpad when I had it with Bluetooth 2.1 and not on my current laptop with either 3.1/4.1, except for the iOS one, and a couple pairs of headphones)