Questions to Ask on a Discovery Call

If you’re looking for a top 10-15 list of discovery call questions, you’ve come to the wrong place.

If you’re looking for a formula to help you develop the right discovery call questions and script for your business, then stick around.

This formula will cover the broader scope of preparation, strategy, and nuanced discovery that will paint your reps as experts and advisors versus qualifiers. 

It is called a discovery call after all, but the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of strict scripts and qualification versus discovery and consultation.

The formula:

1. The Preparation Phase
2. First Questions: Identifying your prospect profile
3. Middle Questions: Identifying your prospect’s business priorities
4. Final Questions: Identifying your prospect’s tactical plan

We’re going to start with discovery prep because even if you have a script and finite questions you need to ask every call, knowing who your prospect is and what they care about will help you frame your questions more effectively. We also advise you to make these “pre-discovery” questions required for reps to fill in before calls.

Then we’ll cover the three types of questions or stages of the discovery call (with examples) to help you craft your own discovery call questions.

But if you’re also looking for answers on best practices for running a discovery call, you’ll want to jump over to this article first.

Related Content: Running a Great Discovery Call

The Preparation Phase 

If we had to pick one thing you could start doing today to run a better discovery call, it would be the amount of time spent researching prospects.

A shockingly small amount of prep work is currently going into discovery calls, and don’t be fooled, it shows. 

The sale is no longer about you and your product; it’s all about the buyer. The discovery call should be your moment to connect with a prospect on the topics of their needs and expectations and show them how you can improve their lives. But to do that, you need to know a bit about them.

Sure, you’re equipped with documentation on your ideal client profile (ICP) and buyer personas, but these are still just generalizations. 

There are three things you need to always prep for to run a great discovery call

1. The company
2. The role
3. The person

Most reps will at least research a prospect’s company before a discovery call, or this is where they spend most of their time.

But don’t stop there. What’s important to this prospect’s role? Are they in operations or finance? Are they senior or mid-level? This information is essentially the purpose of buyer personas, but every organization is different, and it takes less than three minutes to check out your prospect’s LinkedIn profile or the company’s people page. 

Lastly, what’s important to the individual? This is where ICPs and buyer personas especially fall short. Does this person talk about things that are important to them on social? Have they been in the role for months or years? What positions have they held in the past? These details could significantly impact their initiatives and goals.

Now let’s look at what the flow of an ideal discovery call should look like in practice.  

Strategically structuring your discovery call can give your prospect a sense of confidence and comfort, allowing them to be more receptive to what you’re asking – and feel less sporadic or as if you’re checking off questions from a list. Which, of course, you are, but it doesn’t have to feel that way. 

And it won’t if you’ve done the prep work above.

First questions: Identifying your prospect profile 

All that work you just did researching your prospect should show itself in the first part of your discovery call. It’s also a chance to verify assumptions you’ve made about the prospect’s company, role, and individual goals or to fill in those gaps.

Take this crucial few minutes to get to know them. There are benefits to starting in a more introductory way and forging that initial connection with your prospect. For example: 

• You set the tone for the call. By starting in a “get to know you” framework rather than going right in for the hard sell, you establish a tone of the call. You present as open and genuinely interested in their needs. Authenticity is vital in creating trust and puts your prospect at ease, making them more receptive and likely to truly “hear” your pitch when it’s time to get to it. 
• You identify their and their company’s agenda and goals. Identifying and confirming critical facets of the prospect profile and understanding their impact on the department, company, and your solution can help better personalize (and pivot) the rest of your questions to align with their needs and priorities. 

Middle Questions: Identifying your prospect’s business priorities 

After confirming or filling in the gaps around your prospect’s background, you can move into the second round of questions: Identifying your prospect’s business priorities at a high level. You want to start strategic and then get tactical.

This middle set of questions should help you better understand their pain points to tailor your solution and final set of tactical questions to their needs.

A few recommendations as you develop these questions: 

• Don’t jump into a sales pitch. We know it’s tempting, but jumping immediately into your solutions can quickly shut down the conversation. Especially if you have their real problem or pain point wrong. Now’s the time to let them work through the problem themselves and communicate their actual needs back to you. 
• Keep it specific: Rather than ask about general business goals or priorities, ask them to be specific and limit them. For example: 
  • What are your 1-2 top priorities this quarter?
  • “What are your lead generation [aka pain point you want to help solve] goals for this/next quarter?” 

Pro tip: Press the mute button. Give them time to think and answer your questions without interrupting too much. Don’t be too quick to rush in with the fix. You’ll have your chance to advise later, but make sure you’re listening first.

Final questions: Identifying your prospect’s tactical plan 

The final questions in your discovery call should answer the “how.” 

How will your prospect plan to make these goals a reality in their business? This will be the segue for your close. It isn’t as simple as just asking the question, however. You’ll want to encourage your prospect to think through their plans and locate their most pressing or next steps. You can then show them how your offer fits into their framework. 

When creating this last set of questions, consider these best practices: 

• Be strategic in your phrasing. Priming is an effective technique at this stage of the discovery call and can set your prospect up to see the value in your offer or even potentially convince themselves. A great way to start with this technique is to have them focus on a single element that highlights the benefit of your offer. Something like: 
  • “Now, [prospect name], when you think about [XYZ problem]…” 
  • “Let’s talk about [specific solution]…
  • “When it comes to [XYZ problem], what do you think about [specific solution]…” 
• The goal here is to prepare them for the direction that you’re steering the call – and help them switch gears in their thought process from telling you about the problem to telling you what they think the solution is or if they have no idea.

Avoid the Technical Trap in Your Wrap Up

If you’ve followed these three stages of questions, you should have everything you need to advise your prospect on the best solution for them or the best way to use your product. 

But you want to avoid the “technical trap.”

When speaking to stakeholders, they often shut down when it gets too tactical. Tell the story rather than the details of your sale. 

You sell outcomes. Selling the story of how your product solves their problem rather than what your product does functionally is a much stronger approach that will keep your stakeholder engaged.