BTQ

Account Manager

Politicker

Catalyst

Valued Contributor

How to roleplay for discovery calls?

Hey ya'll

My boss wants me to lead discovery calls for smaller accounts. He asked me and my coworker to prepare by roleplaying.

To get the most out of it possible I figured it'd make sense to ask the savages. I'd like to avoid feature dump and try and ask questions to dig up pain.

How would you/did you go about roleplaying for discovery calls?

What are some good questions to have in your tool belt?

🎈 Mentorship

🥎 Training

12 comments

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CadenceCombat

Tycoon

Account Executive

Develop mock customer scenarios with all the info normally accessible prior to a disco call… Company headcount, revenue, contact title, etc. create a path for a specific solution which mirrors real deals that have come through. Most importantly, create no-win situations to teach how to disqualify.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

🦊

Great instruction 🔥

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

Entirely dependent on what you sell, who the target market is and all that jazz, but getting them talking with open-ended questions and all

HVACexpert

Politicker

sales engineer

Not sure on questions, but I would recommend recording it. That way you can watch later to provide feedback and get it from others as well. Helped me for presentations.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

I hate roleplays

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Only way I've seen them done effectively was an objection handling tournament. Each round 2 AEs had 1 minute to respond to an objection. The audience voted who did better.

BTQ

Politicker

Account Manager

See this is what I was looking for.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

It was really fun and learned more than typical role play.

Forgot to mention, you didn't get to hear the others person's response to couldn't "cheat"

HealthyPipe

Opinionated

Enterprise Account Executive

focus on finding "a problem" and dig deep, and then deeper, and you'll be set.

Maximas

Tycoon

Senior Sales Executive

I would mainly just focus on the prospects needs,their budget and the average time range to close the deal if interested!

AnchorPoint

Politicker

Business Coach

Questions must point to solutions you provide. NO SELLING during discovery! All attention is on the prospect. Find pain, expose it, and make sure they understand how big a problem it is to create urgency to fix it NOW.

VP of Account Management

Discovery is less about what you say but what you hear! When you ask a question in your roleplay, listen to the answer and dig deeper until you fully understand what there is to know about that topic. Dont stick with surface answers and move on to the next question. Create a list of questions for the discovery, but be prepared to go off in any direction the conversation leads, follow that path until it ends, and then go back to your list. A discovery is not a straight path, its a meandering path with many forks in the road, and you want to take a peek down as many as possible. Make sure at the end of your discovery you bridge back to what you learned and clarify that information with your partner. Something like "so you are interested in a solution that will X, Y, and Z but you dont want it to Q. You also really enjoyed the solution from ABC Company but they didnt provide ____? Is that correct? Then close them on how you have exactly what they are looking for, lets setup a meeting to show you either end of this week or next week....etc...

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BTQ

How to roleplay for discovery calls?

12 comments

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