Sales Discovery Call Overview

 “Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.” – Og Mandino

A compelling sales discovery call is essential to the overall success of individual salespeople and your company’s sales team. A discovery call template is necessary to help these meetings run smoothly, as it ensures complete preparation. 

A sales discovery call or meeting is the first initial meeting with a potential sales prospect, whether in-person or virtual. Sales discovery calls serve as the first point of contact between a salesperson and a likely candidate. 

Your team holds a discovery sales call every time they reach out to a customer for the first time. By providing them with a template, you can keep your entire sales team on the same page with how they conduct your sales process in the discovery stage. A perfected sales discovery process is prevalent within B2C and B2B companies. Meetings and calls might look differently for every company, as it’s rare to be in the same stage of development. 

In general, a sales discovery call meeting should contain members of the sales team, perhaps even management, depending on the importance of the sale and the prospective client. A discovery call agenda template can assist by ensuring that things will go as planned and the content of the meeting will cover every topic necessary. 

How to Run an Effective Sales Discovery Call Meeting

You must go into any sales discovery call meeting with two things in mind: efficient communication and making the sale. It’s crucial to remember that this stage is early in the sales process, and you don’t want to push too soon. Instead, this meeting aims to identify if your product or service matches the needs of the consumer in question.

The most important component for running an effective sales discovery meeting, other than preparation, is listening. It would help if you asked the necessary questions to understand the needs and pain points the individual consumer or company faces, so you can honestly let them know how and why your product makes a good fit. 

A sales discovery call template allows you to gather your thoughts and talking points before meeting with the client. Few things are more frustrating than a salesperson who can’t run a discovery call effectively, and our template can help! 

You don’t have to have any discovery call experience to put this template into action, so if you’re preparing for your first call, don’t worry! This sales discovery call plan will help you nail it every step of the way. 

“What differentiates sellers today is their ability to bring fresh ideas.”- Jill Konrath

What’s inside Sales Discovery Call Meeting Template:

1 💬About your company

In this section, you’ll want to jot down a few aspects of your company that make you stand out compared to competitors. This is the point in the meeting where you’ll want to tell your story without getting into too much detail. Stick to the how and the way, and don’t forget to throw in a success statistic.

Questions about the prospect’s company and role.

• Tell me about your company.
• Tell me about your role. What do you do day-to-day?

2🚀About your goals

Clients want to know about the goals you have as a business, and while those goals are probably ever evolving, this is where you’ll want to highlight your current short or long-term goals, as they’re relevant to the client.

Questions about the prospect’s overall goals.

• What metrics are you responsible for?
• Tell me about your goals (financial, customer-related, operational).
• When do you need to achieve these goals?

3 🤔About your problem areas

Be transparent about where your company falls short and how you expect to fix those shortcomings. You don’t have to be too detailed here, but clients typically appreciate a certain level of honesty. Many companies shy away from this section, attempting to make it as vague as possible to appear like a company without issues. Unfortunately, those do not exist.

Questions about the prospect’s current problem areas.

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• Are you having problems in [area as it relates to the product]?
• What’s the source of that problem?
• Why is it a priority today?
• Why hasn’t it been addressed before?
• What do you think could be a potential solution? Why?
• What are your primary roadblocks to implementing this plan?

4 💰Timeline and budget

Regardless of who you’re selling to, you’ll want to discuss the timeline and their budget. If you can’t meet either of these client requirements, it’s likely not going to be a match. Honesty comes into play here, once again, because you won’t want to start a service that you cannot finish in the expected time frame.

Questions about the prospect’s timeline and budget.

• What’s your timeline for implementation?
• What’s the approximate budget for solving this problem?
• Whose budget does the funding come from?
• Have you purchased a similar product before?

5 ✋Authority 

In this section, you can prepare for your call by communicating to the client the aspects of the process in which you have authority. If there are certain aspects that you can control (such as when they can pick up their new car, for example), then assure them of that. 

Questions about who makes the final decision at the company.

• Who else will be involved in choosing a vendor?
• What’s the process for actually purchasing the product once you decide on it?

6 ❓Additional questions

Here you’ll want to open the floor to your clients, telling them that the time for additional questions is now. If you have questions regarding the client or their company, you can leave yourself time to ask them at this stage of the meeting. Asking questions is crucial to the outcome of a sales discovery call meeting.

Additional questions to further qualify the lead.

• What are potential curveballs?
• How can I help make this easy?
• How will this solution make your life better?
• If you implement this solution, how do you hope things are different in one year?
• Can I follow up with you on mm/dd?

7 ✅Next steps

Now it’s time to discuss the next steps, which in most cases means the salesperson will talk the consumer through the next steps of the process, should they have an interest in continuing. You may have a good idea if this sale will close or not, so let that guide you. 

Track any next steps or items that you need to follow up on.