A sales discovery call gives you exactly what it sounds like, a sales opportunity, or disqualifies a cold prospect. It lets you gain an understanding of the prospects’ requirements in order to assess whether you can assist them or not.
Unfortunately, salespeople don’t give much attention to the initial stages of the sales process. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you know what relevant questions to ask during a sales discovery call.
Fact check: Today’s sales process takes 22% longer than 5 years ago.
What Is A Sales Discovery Call?
Sales discovery calls set the trajectory of your deal and determine how the sales process proceeds. If done right, you’ll be able to establish an authoritative relationship with your customer. If you do it wrong, there’s a high chance that your prospect will ditch you even after several follow-ups.
Its purpose is simple, to determine whether you and your prospects are a good fit for each other. It lets you understand the customer’s pain points, priorities, and goals so that you can effectively start your sales process.
It is necessary to understand the prospects’ expectations when you accelerate your sales cycle to determine if you should pursue them further or focus on some other lead.
If by any chance you don’t bother to understand your prospects’ priority and continue feeding him information about your product or service, you’re likely wasting both of your time and your prospects.
Considering these facts you can maximize your sales team’s productivity and generate more revenue.
How To Excel The Sales Discovery Call?
Sales discovery calls demand for attention. The nature of your conversation will be the deciding factor whether you get the deal or not.
Researching a little and investing your time in conducting successful discovery calls can be really helpful in the later stages of the sales process.
Here’s how you can excel in the sales discovery process:
Proper Planning
Before you make your calls make sure that you have a plan and you’re prepared. It’s important to research your prospects, go through their profile and company website to see if you have any mutual connection, and find the ideal time to call your prospects.
If you don’t prepare yourself, you might have to wing it and you won’t be ready to answer any curveball questions thrown your way. Your prospect already knows that you’re going to try and sell him something, give him something that meets his requirements.
Always Ask The Right Questions
A bad question can break the sales cycle even before it starts. Find out how useful your product or service will be for your prospect. Consider their plans in terms of teams or businesses. Try and discover what problems they are currently facing and give them solutions.
Having a proper idea about the questions you need to ask makes your product or service seem more appealing. Try to keep your questions to the point and don’t hard-sell.
Qualify Your Prospect
The situational questions you ask help in qualifying your buyer. Your aim should be to qualify whether you and your prospect have a mutual fit. This lets you know where your prospect stands, their pain points, competitive plans, and results.
You could always ask questions like this:
- What is the current strategy you’re using as a team?
- Why do you want to change your workflow in a certain way?
- What’s the budget you have in mind?
- How much time can you invest in doing X this way?
- What would be the impact of X in your business?
Consider limiting the questions you ask and let them ask questions too. Too many questions can make your prospect overwhelmed. Distribute your sales questions evenly throughout the call.
Also Read: 11 Strategies to Improve Sales Performance and Close More Deals
Provide Value To Your Prospect
Once you know their pain points and problems they are facing, give them the solution. Offer your value propositions. This should clearly portray why the prospect should consider buying from you.
Try to keep them engaged by giving them the much-needed space. Connect the knots with your product or service.
Ask them questions that make them eager for a solution to their problems. If they are facing problems in marketing, sales, or support, give them validation for their problems.
- How much money and time you are wasting due to the X problem?
- Is your team affected due to X?
- Any missed opportunities due to X?
- How is X affecting your brand image?
- What if you can’t achieve your yearly target due to the X problem?
These are the questions that make your prospect vulnerable and you can approach them for a solution that caters to their business problem.
Case Studies
Your website already has tons of case studies but after connecting with your prospect on a personal level like this you have the opportunity to give him examples. The correct way to do it is to tell stories.
When you tell stories about similar challenges and how you helped them to resolve the issue, your prospect is more likely to listen.
The way you do it is important, if you talk too much they might think you’re bluffing. Try to reduce talking about all the features and tell more about how you tackled the situation.
Always remember that effective communication is the key here. This can either close the deal or let your prospect escape the sales funnel.
Questions To Ask During A Sales Discovery Call
Qualify your prospect using these questions for your sales discovery call. You might not be able to use all the questions on every call but this can be your guide for what questions are a good fit for you and your prospect.
- How would you like to describe your company?
- What is your role? What does your day look like?
- What are all the metrics you’re responsible for?
- What are your company goals?
- When are you planning to achieve those goals?
- What is the problem you’re facing in achieving the goal?
- What is your priority in all these problems?
- How do you plan to tackle it?
- What is a successful outcome for you?
- What are your primary roadblocks for implementation?
- Do you have a budget in mind?
- What are your criteria for choosing a service or product?
- What are the potential curveballs?
- How will the solution make your business better?
- What are the yearly goals that you wish to accomplish using the product or service?
Successful Sales Discovery Process
Consider the following steps for a successful sales discovery process
Avoid Asking Yes/No Questions
To qualify your prospect it’s necessary to understand their requirements. It becomes difficult when you’re the one who’s dominating the call. The prospect needs to share enough information with you to qualify them.
Subjective questions are a great way to extract information and make your prospect comfortable while in the conversation.
Consistency In Questions
Try not to mess the question flow while you are at it. Don’t ask them random questions that you were not discussing a few minutes before.
Your abrupt question might make them anxious and they won’t be able to provide you with sufficient information. Your questions should be in a proper flow that makes your prospect feel more comfortable.
Call Recording
Recording your sales discovery call is essential. It’s to ensure that you don’t miss out on any important detail. A CRM with inbuilt cloud telephony can be of tremendous help that comes with features like interactive voice response and virtual receptionist.
Track your calls and listen to the recordings at your convenience with the help of an IVR service. The next time you talk to the prospect you would be well-versed with his needs and problems he is facing. It gives you the upper hand in selling your product or service.
Clear Call-to-Action
Your prospect should get confused about what to do next after you hang up the call. Suggest him the next steps and don’t end the call abruptly. Give him clear call-to-action and decide the next step to be taken.
You can schedule a free demo or meeting with him to discuss things further.
Impact Of Discovery Call On Buyer Experience
Today’s buyers are smart. They have access to an unprecedented volume of information. And, they have more options than ever before.
While you run the sales process, the prospect looks for a solution that speaks directly to their needs. You have to ensure that your discovery process captures the prospect’s perspective.
Business is always people buying from people.
That’s the reason the discovery call should nurture opportunities to establish a personal bond with the prospect.
You might get tempted to give them a product demo right away but that only makes your process longer. Trying to hard-sell can cost you a lot of leads. Make yourself approachable and build customer trust and make them comfortable talking to you.
A lead management system gives you the freedom to store, nurture, and convert the leads you captured from the sales discovery call
All the sales come down to decisions made with trust. Your sales discovery process should be optimized to build a trustworthy business relationship.
Conclusion
Investing your time in qualified leads can take your business to heights. Now you don’t have to chase cold leads and waste your valuable time. A buyer will only buy from you if you give him the valued solution for his problem.
Remember to ask relevant questions that can help you qualify the prospects and convert them. With the correct tool, it becomes easier to convert qualified leads through sales automation.
Streamline your sales workflow and excel in the sales discovery calls with the best CRM alternative tool.
