Brian LaMannaAE @ Gong | Closed Won 🦙 | 7x President’s Club

How to Start Every Discovery Call (4 Questions)

1 May 2025 · 2 min

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1:42

Brian LaManna (Enterprise Account Executive at Gong) presents a short how-to for opening discovery calls, framing a four-question structure. He emphasizes credibility-building through a prepared, scripted point of view; active listening by summarizing the prospect’s comments; and priority-checking by asking what (if anything) ‘trumps’ the stated initiative. Speaker credentials and concrete example scripts are used to illustrate each step.

Questions this video answers

1,000 plus discovery calls.

Six times.

Gong — Enterprise Account Executive.

Chapters

I've ran 1,000 plus discovery calls as an account executive. I've won hundreds of logos and I've lost hundreds more. Hi, I'm Brian lamanna and I'm a six times President's Club winner and a current Enterprise AE over at Gong. And these are the four ways I start every discovery call today. Number one, I always start with an ultra prepared and a scripted point of view. You have to establish credibility in the very first question you ask on that call. Here's a quick example. I did my homework and I saw your CEO Karen just started and you released your new Acme Cloud product is generating new customers for Acme Cloud. You and Karen's number one priority over the coming months. Number two, what I do is I summarize what they said back to me even more concisely. It shows you're actively listening, not just checking through the qualification boxes. So here's an example. Thanks for sharing to make sure I understand the team is moving up market to enterprise from previously serving more of the SMB and mid market space. You have little experience in enterprise so it'll be pivotal to learn from each sales cycle. Is that right? Number three, what I do is I confirm if that's truly the number one priority or if anything else might trump it today. So an example of what this sounds like is I'll say, hey, it seems like Acme Cloud is a huge initiative. Does anything trump that as an even larger initiative this year? Now you get two great outcomes when you ask that Trump question. Number one, they either confirm, yes, that is my number one focus. Nothing else trumps that. Or two, they share what's actually their number one priority. Either way, you've uncovered their true top focus and that's going to be the foundation of every great discovery call and the foundation of every great sales cycle.