The discovery call: get them talking, in order.

A call with no frame drifts into a pitch. In under two minutes: the goal of the call, how long it will take, what you’ll do at the end, and a first question that hands over the floor. No small talk that drags, no company overview.

• “The idea today is to understand how you work and see whether we can help. Thirty minutes, and at the end we decide together what comes next. Sound good?”
• “To start: what made you take this call?”

A discovery plan fits on a short list. You don’t have to cover everything on every call, but you do have to know what’s missing.

• The trigger: why now.
• The stakes in numbers: what the problem costs.
• The decision-maker: who signs, who influences.
• The budget or range: the order of magnitude they’d accept.
• The timeline: when this needs to be solved.
• The competition: who else, including doing nothing.
• The criteria: what they’ll judge on.
• The next step: dated, named.
• The risk: what could kill it.

A good discovery question is open, asked on its own, and followed by silence. The follow-up that digs is often more useful than the question itself: “what does that look like in practice?”, “what did that cost you?”, “for example?”

Avoid stacked questions (“and how many of you are there, on what tools, since when?”): the prospect answers the last one and forgets the rest.

On a good discovery call, the prospect talks more than you do. Past half the time for the rep, the call turns into a presentation. The signs you need to stop talking: a monologue over a minute, fewer than eight questions in thirty minutes, an interruption.

A call that ends on “let’s stay in touch” is half lost. The next step gets named and dated during the call, calendars open, with the people who need to be there. If the decision-maker wasn’t on the call, the next step is the call with them.

• “Let’s meet again Thursday with your business partner, thirty minutes, and I’ll walk you through it on your numbers. 11 or 3?”