Kick off your discovery call research

Closing deals on a discovery call has the potential to be simple – even gratifying – when done right. By the end of this playbook, you’ll have a solid understanding of the importance of this crucial step in the sales process, how to pilot the call with confidence, how to close and follow up with professionalism, and much more. You’ll also walk away with your own script to help you nail your next call and beyond. 

The goal of the discovery call

A discovery call is your first chance to have a face-to-face chat with a prospect after they have shown initial interest in your services. Typically, these conversations are held online over Zoom, Google Meet or other video conference platform; however, in-person discovery meetings are not out of the ordinary if you and the prospect reside in the same area.‍

1. Connect: Build trust between your businesses and move the sales process forward. 

2. Qualify: Ask a series of questions to determine the fit between both parties.

3. Understand: Uncover your prospect’s pain points, priorities, and goals. ‍

Why you can’t skip this step

If you’re the introverted type or just trying to reduce Zoom fatigue, you may want to skip this step. You may think, “Do I really need to get on a phone call with every lead? Can’t we just email?” 

But the answer is no, you shouldn’t skip this step. 

Rather than investing significant time and energy into a new business only to find out they were looking for services you can’t provide or don’t agree ideologically on how to achieve goals, discovery calls ensure both businesses are on the same page. Remember: You are evaluating them as much as they are evaluating you.

In addition, 

• Back-and-forth emails kill the “new project” momentum.

• Email writing can be misinterpreted both in tonality and in minor yet important details. 

• Your competitors are most likely meeting your prospect face-to-face, getting one-up on you if you don’t do the same. 

So you can either dread the discovery call or use it as a golden opportunity to convert the prospect into a client.

Our approach: preparation is key

“Success is where preparation and opportunity meet.” - Bobby Unser

Let preparation be your northern star, guiding you onward and upward. This northern star will also be the fuel that fills you with the confidence you need to run a smooth call. Many studies show that preparedness can boost confidence and put you in the right headspace to accomplish a potentially nerve-racking task.

That’s where this playbook comes in. The focus is not on the theory behind sales calls but rather how to be fully prepared to tackle your next call. And even better – it’s totally repeatable, so you can return to this playbook to prepare for each and every call until you have enough experience under your belt to do it on your own. 

With that, we want to introduce you to Alex.

Alex is a freelance copywriter who has a discovery call with a B2B SaaS (Software as a Service) company that sells cloud-based accounting. This company needs a copywriter to help write a landing page as part of a new product launch initiative.

Alex will be taking you through the process of building a personalized discovery call script for this client. You’ll see the conversation as it plays out piece by piece and create a script for your own client alongside Alex. Sound good? Let’s dive in.