Clinching a deal is thrilling. You get a real buzz when you move a potential customer over the line to an actual buyer. But to get there, you have to rewind to the beginning of the sales process. You need to make a great first impression and build a positive relationship with your prospect.
Here, I’ll talk you through the sales discovery process. I’ll share tips to help you nail that first phone call with a potential customer, and the best sales discovery call questions to ask.
What is a Sales Discovery Call?
A sales discovery call is the first conversation you have with a prospect who’s shown interest in your business. It’s where you start building rapport between potential buyer and seller, and positioning yourself as a trusted advisor. By asking the right questions, you’ll find the prospect’s pain points, the challenges they face and their goals. From this first call, you’ll understand the buyer’s journey and you’ll have a good idea whether it’s worth continuing to move them along the sales process.
According to Salesforce, 92% of customer interactions are on the phone. Alarmingly, 85% of customers feel dissatisfied with these experiences. Preparing for your call could be the difference between your ideal customer viewing it as a positive rather than negative experience.
No pressure, right? Do your homework and you’re one step closer to making a great discovery call and nailing that deal!
The Sales Discovery Process Explained
Effective sales processes boost conversions, turn more potential customers into closed deals, and ensure you provide customers with a positive and consistent experience.
Sales discovery calls set the course for the entire sales process. The goal of this first sales discovery call is to convince prospects to continue along the sales process with you. The best way to ensure it’s a successful discovery call is to ask your potential customer well-researched discovery questions, answer their queries and raise valuable insights that make your prospect feel you’re a credible authority.
For sales reps, the sales discovery process is about researching a prospect, making the discovery phone call, asking key questions, answering their questions, solving their challenges, and, ideally, moving them along the sales pipeline.
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How Do I Prepare for a Sales Discovery Call?
Your pre-call preparation goes beyond checking your prospect’s social media channels. A scan of their LinkedIn profile won’t cut it. You need a better understanding of your prospect’s needs, insights into your prospect’s company and some potential solutions to the challenges they face. Putting in this work initially, lays the foundations for a good discovery call. It also eases the overall sales cycle.
A few ways to prepare for your first call:
- Check the company website: get to know their offering and think of the potential prospect’s challenges and pain points that they encounter. Who’s who? Try to work out who the key decision-makers and stakeholders would be. Get a picture of what they value as a company, and how your business can feed into that.
- Use social media: look for common connections between you and your prospect on LinkedIn. That could be a person, employer or industry group – anything that can be a conversation starter.
- Look out for relevant news: is there a shake-up in their industry? Have they or their competitor launched a new product/ service? See if there’s any new information that can reveal their biggest challenge, need or pain point.
- Review any previous interactions: has the potential customer had any previous calls or email communications from your company? Have they received marketing materials, cold calls or emails? Your CRM should show this data and more.
Once you’ve gathered all this useful information, it’s time to prepare your questions.
What are Effective Questions to Ask During a Sales Discovery Call?
Sales professionals’ questions need to go through the stages of the sales discovery process: setting the stage (intro questions), qualifying the prospect, disqualifying the prospect, and establishing the next steps. By asking the right questions, you’ll soon know if there’s value in continuing to contact the potential customer or not.
Intro Questions that Set the Stage
You may know some of these answers from your research, but you’ll gain personal insights into your prospect’s current situation and their day-to-day challenges. Ask open-ended questions to get the conversation flowing. According to Hubspot, 82% of salespeople say that building relationships with people is the most important part of selling (and the most enjoyable part of their job). So this first stage is the building block for any ongoing client relationship.
Examples include:
- Tell me about your role and your day-to-day responsibilities
- Tell me more about your company
- What are your success metrics?
Qualifying Questions
You’ve discovered the basic information, now build on it. Here, you want to uncover their biggest challenges, current processes and the problems that you can solve.
Potential questions include:
- What are your current goals?
- What’s your timeline for that?
- Is there a budget available for x?
- How’s your current solution working?
- Do you have a potential solution in mind? What would it look like?
- What would a successful outcome be for you?
Disqualifying Questions
It’s important to pinpoint factors that could be roadblocks to closing the deal. Focus on topics like budgets, timelines and the decision-making process.
Ask questions like:
- What are the main roadblocks to reaching that goal?
- What’s your budget for this and where would it come from?
- What’s the biggest challenge you face with x?
- If x happened, what would the business do? How would that impact your team?
Next Step Questions
Establish what’s going to happen next. Ask the questions that will progress your prospect along the sales pipeline. At the end of the call, leave them with a recommendation.
Suggested questions include:
- Who else is involved in making this decision? What’s the process?
- Have you purchased similar items before?
- What would make this process easier and how can I help with that?
- How will this solution make your day-to-day easier?
- What do we need to do to make this deal happen?
- Based on what we’ve discussed today, I’d recommend…
At the end of the call, summarise what you’ve discussed (their top priorities, biggest challenges and potential solutions). Suggest a time and day for a follow up conversation. You may want to send over some information for them to review (like specific details or pricing), and for you to discuss on that next call.
Close More Deals with Great Discovery Calls
Great sales discovery calls feel like a natural conversation not a sales pitch. The salesperson’s challenge is to make a pre-prepared and well-researched discussion feel like a friendly chat. Done well, the discovery call sees a buyer and seller share ideas and potential solutions for the biggest challenges and pain points faced by the prospect. It lays the foundation for their relationship, and encourages the potential customer to progress along the sales pipeline.
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