Nairobi

How many questions do you usually ask during a discovery call?

My company does the discovery + demo in one call. We ask about 3-4 basic questions, and then we jump into the demo.

It's very different from my previous company, where my manager would say that asking a lot of questions is always better to gather as much information as possible. My current manager says the opposite; he thinks that asking too many questions will bore the prospect and that we should show our product as soon as possible. I do understand his point, but I think that we are losing a lot of our deals because we didn't do a proper discovery.

What do you do? Do you ask a lot of questions to uncover everything or do you keep it short & sweet?

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BmajoR

Arsonist

Account Executive

As many as it takes.

Simo

Politicker

Director of Sales

spot on. If you don't know how many to ask, keep asking till everyone is irritated.

Nairobi

Politicker

That's how I am in my everyday life, I ask as many questions as possible to make sure that I understand and I'm on the same page with the other person. But with this manager, it's hard for me to ask those basic 3 questions and move on.

GlenRoss

Politicker

Account Executive

Is your sales cycle super transactional? If it’s a considered purchase, it’ll be tough to understand the problem with only 3-4 disco questions

Nairobi

Politicker

Nope, it's not transactional at all. Exactly, we ask "what made you get on the call" and then whatever they say is "the problem" but I think that's wrong. I think we need to ask more questions.

goose

Politicker

Sales Executive

You probably need to ask way more questions. The answer to why they got on the call could be a problem. But you’ll likely need to dig for the reason for the problem. Your manager sounds like someone that wants to pitch, not solve problems.

Nairobi

Politicker

All we do is pitch, from our cold outreach to our demo, surprisingly we get a lot of meetings but as expected, we can't close. I think it's because we just pitch but my manager thinks it's because we need more meetings/more people in our pipeline.

goose

Politicker

Sales Executive

In some cases he may be right. I don’t necessarily believe that “more” solves anything unless you are guessing people’s age and weight at a carnival.

Nairobi

Politicker

I wished I could double upvote this just for the ''unless you are guessing people's age and weight at a carnival'' 😂

goose

Politicker

Sales Executive

Tell your friends...

paddy

WR Officer

Director of Business Development

No set number. Discovery is more for you to collect info so if there's something else you need to 'discover' then keep asking questions.

Nairobi

Politicker

I agree, and I've told that to my manager, he said "We don't want to bore them by asking questions. If they like the product, they'll buy it"

TheDeplorable

Politicker

I ask to get to the second level questions of "why"

Nairobi

Politicker

What do you mean by second level questions of "why"?

wahmsales

WR Officer

SDR

@NairobiI'm guessing it means if you ask "Why is that important to you?" and they respond, and you ask "and why is THAT important to you?".

Nairobi

Politicker

Aaah gotcha, that makes sense

CaneWolf

Politicker

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

I've mostly done mission critical software...so dozens.

DrunkenArt

Politicker

Sales Representative

3-5 on the disco calls. I'll usually see how the conversation is flowing and if everything is going well, I'll keep going into more depth.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

All of them

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

My ideal discovery call is 50 minutes of questions, 5 min of basic demo (to address what I heard), then 5 min to discuss next steps.

Nairobi

Politicker

Oh wow 50 min that's the longest discovery call I've heard, is it because your product is complex?

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Theres always another question to ask! Ask about pain, people, process, etc.

I use the acronym TED

Tell me about...

Explain...

Describe...

Nairobi

Politicker

That's true! Thanks for the acronym, that's a good trick

jefe

Arsonist

🍁

We do disco on its own call and definitely ask more than 3-4 questions. There's probably 5 or so that are crucial, and they lead into a lot of questions that vary depending on the answer.

And because my company's software is relatively big ticket, I always confirm budget beforehand, and provide a ballparked range as I don't want to waste anyone's time with things that are out of the realm of possibility.

Businesscasual

Politicker

Account Executive

It depends a ton on the service you provide. Going straight to the demo in some instances sets you up for failure because you don’t know what they value and what they don’t so you could be showing them a ton of stuff that’s not relevant to them and end up losing the deal. Who I sell to, I only need 15 min but at my last company selling to accounting I needed about 30-45 min worth of discovery questions before I even showed them the service.

Nairobi

Politicker

Agreed. My service is pretty straightforward but there are many use cases, and so, as you said, we should understand what they value which we don't do most of the time.

HappyGilmore

Politicker

Account Executive

Don't have a set number but typically try to ask quite a few questions and uncover what will help me have an effective demo, then have more discovery type questions throughout the rest of the sales process.

Nairobi

Politicker

What does your sales process look like?

HappyGilmore

Politicker

Account Executive

Ours is typically a 30 minute intro call and then an hour meeting after for a demo and then other steps after that if all goes well.

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

“Are you gonna invest or not!?!?”

Nairobi

Politicker

The only question needed lol

SaaSguy

Tycoon

Account Executive

A lot. You need to not only learn about their needs but also their buying process which sometimes can be more complicated than their tech needs.

Nairobi

Politicker

True. I think we are good at understanding their buying process but no their needs

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

No more than 4 planned questions. More it the conversation is casually flowing.

TheDeplorable

Politicker

True, if you keep it conversational.....you can ask a lot of questions and the prospect will keep talking

Nairobi

Politicker

Are your 4 questions always the same? If so, do you mind sharing them?

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

No they are different for every client. I can tell you I ask questions based on information I was unable to find through research.

KendallRoy

Politicker

As many as it takes to get the prospect talking so we can get to the pain, or to quickly qualify the prospect out so I'm not wasting my time

nomdeguerre

Executive

Account executive

I think most organization gets discovery wrong, and I think the main problem is that they view discovery as an event rather than a way of thinking. Discovery is not a one time event but rather an ongoing way of working, you should continuously be doing discovery in each interaction with your prospect.

The result of viewing discovery as an event is that organization either ask way too few questions or way too many.

You should definitely ask enough questions in order to deliver a relevant presentation/demo/pitch, but you should not go into interrogation mode and ask the prospect a million questions before telling them anything or presenting your product. Nobody wants to be interrogated, especially if you don't already know them.

Also, you have to treat the prospect differently depending on how you got into a conversation. If they reached out to you, then it is acceptable for you to ask more information, but if the conversation of you reaching out to them then you should ask fewer questions before going into an initial presentation. Seems obvious, but I'm shocked how often people don't understand this.

You should also always ask permission to ask your questions: ok, mr. prospect to begin with I would like to ask you a few questions, so I can serve your needs better, sound good?

I think Jordan Belfort does a great job of explaining how to do discovery in his book "Way of the Wolf". He calls it intelligence gathering, which I really like.

MrMotivation

Politicker

Sales

As many as I can. I try to have two discovery focused calls before showing any product. Complicated platform calls for it. But I wouldnt really ever show live product first call

eman

Politicker

Account Executive

Tons of discovery. First meeting, discovery and plant some seeds on how we may align to identified use cases. Second meeting, 5 minutes of discovery than confirm use cases and then quick presentation. Third meeting, demo.

YoursTruly

Politicker

Account Executive (SaaS)

Gong broke down the stats of their tagged discovery/IM calls across all of their customers and it confirmed that the more you get the prospect talking the more likelihood they agree to the next step. It was something like 70% of the call should be the prospect talking, not you the rep. Basically, nobody cares about your demo unless you can apply it to a business need. You don’t know the pain points off of three questions. Gotta love a sales manager who doesn’t know how to sell.

Nairobi

Politicker

Amen! Yeah I think he is a bit rusty, he used to do sales back in the days and now he is giving it a second try...

bareknuckles

Valued Contributor

CEO of my kitchen table

8-11

happytobehere

Opinionated

Head of Partnerships

Feel out the vibes. If they seem like they are ready to share it all, keep em coming. If they start to brush you off, find a way to connect with them another way to get the answers you need.

Blackwargreymon

Politicker

MDR

I ask to get to the second level questions of "why"

Clashingsoulsspell

Politicker

ISR

3-5 on the disco calls.

Bandido

Politicker

Client Director

lol is there an actual answer here? If you are counting questions you are missing the point.

Nairobi

Politicker

Not looking for a particular answer, just interested to see how people conduct their discovery calls

MR.StretchISR

Politicker

ISR

Is your sales cycle super transactional? If it’s a considered purchase, it’ll be tough to understand the problem with only 3-4 disco questions

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Nairobi

How many questions do you usually ask during a discovery call?

50 comments

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