Discovery Call: An Essential Tool For The Future

What is a Discovery Call?

A discovery call should be one of the first conversations you have with a prospect. The purpose of the call is to discover more about the client as well as if you are a good match.

You should never continue through the sales process with potential clients that aren’t a good fit for your company.

A discovery call does its job when either the call reveals how you can work together or that you aren’t a good match. Never force a relationship. If you force a relationship, you and the client won’t be happy throughout the process.

Have Important Questions In Place

Don’t wing your discovery call. While you might have an idea of what you are going to ask your potential client, you should have a list of standard questions.

If you don’t have a specific list of questions and a system down, you could miss important pieces of the call.

Having a strategy and even roleplaying with other employees to make sure your discovery call skills are on point can help you execute your discovery calls more effectively. When you understand how important these calls are, you will take the time to prepare for the calls and use them on a daily basis.

Record Your Calls for Analysis

When you do discovery calls, record them. Whether the call is what you’d call good or not, you should listen to the recordings and see where you can get better.

If you don’t listen to the recordings and study to get better, you never will.

If you can take constructive criticism, it is also helpful to have someone else listen to the call and give you helpful pointers. If you don’t trust a coworker, you can ask a friend to listen and tell you where they hear some areas that need improvement.

Set the Agenda & Get the Prospect’s Agreement

Before you begin your discovery call, you should already have the prospect’s agreement on the call agenda. If you enter the call without their knowing what you will talk about, the call could become uncomfortable.

You may even want to lay out the call and send over a PDF where they can read along. Depending on their personality, this could put them at ease throughout your call.

When you get them to agree to the call’s agenda before it takes place, you can get to the point of the call quickly. You don’t need to waste time leading to the point of the call because everyone is already on the same page.

Use Stories During the Discovery Call

Stories are important for many reasons, but during a discovery call, they are especially important. When you tell a story, you drive your point home, and you can reach people’s emotions faster.

When you are selling, you want to get your point across quickly without spouting a lot of facts and figures. While facts and figures are important, these things aren’t likely to stick with your prospect for a long time.

Stories will stay with people for years to come, and people will remember you and your product because of these stories.

If you get stuck during the question-asking process, you can easily transition to stories to make things less awkward. Calls don’t always go as planned so having a backup strategy to get the results you want will put you at ease.

Close on the Discovery Call

Don’t feel like you have to keep stringing the prospect through a long-drawn-out sales process. If the prospect is ready to do business with you, go for the close. You don’t have to use strong-arm closes and turn your prospect off.

1. Assumptive Close

One very effective way to close on a discovery call is assuming the prospect wants to move forward with a specific product or service. If you actively listen throughout the call, you can see where your product or service will be a match.

Once you see where your service or product can solve a problem, start talking about the next step. Talk about what they need to do to get ready to do business with you. 

2. Prospect Buy-in Close

If you feel the assumptive close is too much, go for the prospect buy-in close. When you use the prospective buy-in close, you get their agreement that they have a problem they would like you to solve for them.

When people give you the invite to tell them more about your solution, share freely and use stories to drive it home.

Important Points to Remember

When you are putting your discovery call process together, keep in mind that every business is different. Your call may take longer than another company’s, or your call may not take long at all.

Know there is no right or wrong length of the call.

The most important part of these calls is to see if you both are a good fit and how you can solve their problems. Discovery calls are a no-pressure way to have a two-way conversation that is helpful to both your company and the prospect.

Train your sales professionals on how to do discovery calls, and you will see conversions increase when you are feeding them high-quality leads. 

Take Your Business to the Next Level

Discovery calls can help you weed out less than desirable clients. Instead of wasting valuable time talking to the wrong prospects, you can work with the right people and get to the close faster.

When you are learning about the benefits of a discovery call, video editing, or content marketing, you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for help.

Contact us today for a free quote and let us help you take your business to the next level with our media company.