What to do Before You Dial in to that Discovery Call

Scale the Sale – A series on building a world-class enterprise tech sales organization, from the ground up.

Learn what you need to do daily for more successful discovery calls.

If you’re in sales and struggling to move prospects through the funnel, there are many diagnostic questions you could ask yourself to find out why, but for now, let’s start with these: 

• Before you get on a call with a new prospect, have you done all your homework? 
• Based on the prospect’s industry, role and characteristics of their company, do you understand the pain points and gaps that your product, service, or solution solves? 
• Can you predict what questions they might have, or where you might get pushback?
• Have you consulted with fellow reps about their experience with similar prospects, especially ones that later become customers?
• Have you talked to people within your company in similar roles as your prospect, and received feedback from their point of view?

If you answer “no” to these questions, that might be a good indicator as to why you’re not successfully moving prospects through the buyer’s journey. You can’t expect your calls to go well if you don’t know who you’re selling to, and how to best sell to them.

It might seem tedious to do so much research before every scheduled call, but the results literally pay off. You increase your chances of closing, and can even shave weeks to months off your average sales cycle in the process.  

The best way to do your pre-call homework is to make a habit of doing it every day, and doing it with all the people in your org that will have the ability to directly or indirectly impact the sale. 

Here’s an example of how our team does it.

At the start of every morning, our team meets for 30 - 40 minutes to discuss which prospects they’re scheduled to have discovery calls with that day. The purpose isn’t to just give individual reports, but to strategize as a team about the most effective plays and strategies to use with each account.

The three main goals of the meeting are to:

1.    Clarify the characteristics of the account

2.    Identify similar accounts that resulted in closed/won deals

3.    Establish the strategy to orchestrate the call

This meeting includes not just sales development reps, but senior sales executives, account managers and others in roles outside of Sales that match the personas of our prospects—such as IT, marketing and C-suite decision-makers. SDRs discuss strategies among themselves, but also get valuable feedback from more experienced sales professionals, and from colleagues in other departments.

By the end of the meeting, the team knows how best to conduct their calls. They know what questions to ask to learn more about the prospects, what pushback to expect, and what plays will generate the most urgency and interest.

The team walks out of the meeting and into their calls with the support and knowledge of the entire sales organization behind them, armed with confidence, preparedness and motivation for what they do.

These daily meetings result in more calls ending with prospects who feel like their needs have been understood, and their questions and concerns addressed. These prospects are more likely to pursue next steps.

The implementation of these pre-call strategy sessions has contributed to better prospect and customer relationships and has shortened the time it takes to close deals. 

The Takeaway

Improving your chances of closing deals—and the quality of those deals—starts with going into every interaction well-prepared. The heavy lifting in the beginning pays off both right away and down the line. Prospects notice when you’ve done your homework. It makes them more likely to say yes sooner, and more often. 

Jake Rothstein is the Director of Global Sales Development at MotionPoint, a U.S.-based technology firm that helps large enterprises launch, operate and optimize their multilingual websites to serve their global customers.