7 Discovery Tips For Your Sales Calls

The two biggest mistakes I see when coaching discovery calls are:

• Salespeople use discovery as a checkbox activity. You need to ask questions out of genuine curiosity rather than simply to tick a box.
• Salespeople over-complicate discovery and don’t ask simple questions

To help avoid these issues, here are some questions and tips to apply in your discovery calls

1. Set an agenda for the call

“Jeff, I’d like to ask some questions to better understand you and your business, then I’d be happy to explain how we could potentially help you, and if we both see a good fit, we can schedule a follow up call. How does that sound to you?”

The reason this is important is so they understand why you are asking discovery questions in the first place. If you don’t, some buyers will ask “can you just show me a demo?” but setting an agenda will help set expectations and avoid this.

2. Ask “why were you interested in having the call today?”

It’s amazing how many salespeople never ask this question. It is so simple yet one of the most effective questions you can ask towards the start of the call. Their reason for taking the call could uncover a lot of the goals and challenges that you are seeking.

3. Ask “what goals are you trying to achieve with X?”

The answer to why were they interested in taking the call today should give you the X, and then you can dig into where they are trying to get to. Unless you can help a company reach a goal, then there is no business case.?

An example in our case is a prospect replying to question 2 - “we have 3 SDRs and 2 AEs and we want to create a repeatable, scalable outbound process that enables all 5 of them to consistently fill our pipeline."

In response I’d say, “what goals or performance metrics do you have for the 3 SDRs and 2 AEs over the next 3-6 months?”

4. Ask “what is preventing you from reaching Y goal at the moment?"

This is one of the most important questions as it will uncover the challenge with their status quo, and buyers generally work 2 x harder to avoid loss as they will to gain benefits.

To give a practicable example - if someone answers to question 3 - “we want the AEs to book 4 qualified opportunities a month and the SDRs to generate 8”, I would follow up with:

“OK - let’s start with the SDRs Jeff. What is preventing your SDRs from reaching that goal of 8 today?”

5. Educate them with industry expertise

This is another key component, which helps avoid turning the discovery process into an interrogation. You don’t want them to feel like they are in a police station, and are providing you information without getting any information in return.

Let’s say they answered an unrealistic metric for the goal question “we want each of our 10 SDRs to booking 20 outbound enterprise qualified opportunities.”

I would challenge them and say “20 opps per month is a realistic target for an SDR team doing high volume, transactional sales but you mentioned enterprise deals and typically targets for those are 5-10 a month. What is your average deal size if you don’t mind me asking?”

6. Recap what they tell you and then ask a follow up question

This is effective for a number of reasons. It helps clarify that you understand what they are saying and it shows you are a good listener and not your stereotypical sleazy salesperson just trying to get commissions.

“So you mentioned 8 qualified opportunities per SDR. How did you calculate that number?”

7. Always establish a next step at the end of the call

If you both agree there is a fit, then you should book the next call while you still have them on the current meeting. Email is a blackhole as people now get hundreds of emails a day, so while you still have them, ask them to pull up their calendar and suggest a few times.

It’s important to also establish an agenda for that next call. Don’t just say “we will do a demo” like everyone else. Link the next call to what you learned in discovery. For example:

“On the next call, we’ll run through our coaching checklist, which will be the basis of what we will use to help get your SDRs from 4 to 8 opportunities a month, and to help remove their fear of call reluctance.”

Even if there is not a good fit to buy, you can still have an alternative next step. You can ask if they are interested in being added to your newsletter, having a catch up call in 3 months or even refer them to a different company that is more suited to what they are looking for.

Any discovery questions or tips you would add to the 7 above here?