The ULTIMATE B2B Sales Discovery Guide for 2025

Most people think that successful discovery calls are just a matter of planning. Some questions probably taken from some top 10 discovery questions list that you've that you read, which will lead to your prospect sharing all of their pain and then they'll let you guide them to your solution. But reps thinking that way are losing hundreds of thousands of dollars of commission. Great discovery calls have very little to do with the questions you planned, but everything to do with how to earn the right to have ask the right questions. And I know this because over the last decade, my teams have brought in over $50 million in revenue for companies like MongoDB, Qualtrics, and now LaunchDarkly. And I've trained so many people in sales that I've literally lost count and across massive groups of salespeople. It's actually scary how bad most people are at discovery, which is why I decided to make this video where I'm going to show you everything you need to know to convert 70% or more of your discovery calls into qualified opportunities. And it really doesn't matter what industry you're in, because the framework I'm about to show you works for absolutely anything you sell. And it all starts with changing your mindset on discovery calls. Like I said in the beginning, the biggest mistake that people make is that they come prepared with questions, but they don't come prepared with a point of view. And that makes the average discovery conversation absolutely painful to watch. A prospect that doesn't want to be there peppered by superficial questions by a rep that's terrified of looking dumb. And. And I found over most of the calls I've seen in my career, most discovery calls spend 20 or more minutes on this uncomfortable, superficial type conversation that the customer doesn't care about. That's nearly 70% of a typical discovery call. Completely wasted. I promise you. The last thing your prospect wants to be asked are useless questions you could have easily researched before. Questions like where are you based? How does your company make money? Can you describe the day to day of your role? I hate these questions because they immediately make your prospect think this seller doesn't understand me. And if they think you don't understand them, how are they going to trust any recommendation you make for them? Now, there's a way that you can completely flip this scenario and actually lead them to thanking you for spending time with them. In this approach that I've used to help my teams increase a first call conversion by more than 40%. And it all starts before you get on the discovery call by developing a strong point of view. I teach my teams to always have a strong opinion loosely held. I'd actually rather they show up to a discovery call with an incorrect or inaccurate point of view that the buyer can correct rather than no perspective and no point of view at all. Bringing this perspective helps to show our customer that we aren't clueless, we came prepared and it helps us get into deep meaningful discovery fast. Now I break this point of view into into three parts. First, company objectives. What are the big picture goals that we are likely working towards. Second team objectives for the team I'm talking to. What are they likely working on that impacts those company big bets? And then finally priorities which I leave blank going into the discovery conversation so I can use customer feedback to get it 100% right now. It's never been easier to get this point of view using AI tools. I use ChatGPT, but you can use any chat based model you like or just do research on their website, LinkedIn, etc. If you want to do it the more manual way. Here's what my prompt looks like if I'm using AI. Feel free to pause and take a screenshot and copy this. Now using this prompt returns great intel. Here's what it looked like when I ran this for a targeted account. This quickly breaks down what matters most at the company level and team level. It's more detail than I would share on a discovery call, but I can take the key points and translate it into a simple visual from my discovery conversation which might look like this. Now that we have all this data, there's no reason why we wouldn't have a meaningful conversation in discovery. However, we're not done. We still need to go make sure that we run a discovery that leads the client to meaningful next steps, and we'll do that through my successful discovery checklist. 1. We need to understand why they took the call and what would be a win for them. Now the the best questions aren't the complicated ones, they're the simplest and we can get this first checklist point done with very simple questions. If it's an inbound lead, I just ask what led to you reaching out to us and what's one thing you want to make sure you get out of the call today? If it's an outbound, I tweak it a little bit. Hey, I'm sure you get a lot of outreach from people wanting to meet with you. What led to your interest in taking a meeting with us and what's one thing you want to make sure you get out of the call today. It's a simple question, but it starts the call off with your prospect feeling heard, understood and helps you understand what they want to get out of the call, which is critical to get their engagement. The second point of the checklist, you need to confirm or change your point of view while validating what is most important to the customer. At the beginning I talked about how Most discoveries spend 20 or more minutes on superficial conversations. It's because the seller doesn't find a problem worth solving for at least that long. Now when you're bringing the point of view, you can cut that time down from 20 minutes or more to more like three to seven minutes after understanding why they took the call, which might actually help you understand immediately their priorities. You can ask something like I wanted to be prepared for a meaningful conversation, so I took some time to do some research. I'd love to get your feedback and what I got right or wrong. Then I'll just share my point of view slide and I'll open it up for their feedback. Now this next piece is critical because I want to make sure we focus the rest of the conversation on deal winning problems. Once I've gone through and added, changed, corrected the company objectives and team objectives, I'm going to ask how would you rank these in order of priority? Now you know what's most important to the customer. Now we get to the third part of the Discovery checklist. You need to understand what their current state is relevant to their priority. Now since you know their priority by executing this point of view, the questions are really easy. How are you trying to accomplish priority? What are your main challenges in accomplishing than the advent priority? Then you just need to clarify where necessary to go get a full understanding. Now just real quick, this is a lot of info. You're going to want to be able to reference this later. To prepare for discovery calls, I've created a free discovery framework where I go in more depth on all these topics that I'm covering in this video so you can start winning more deals. You can grab that from the link in the description. Let's go to the fourth part then of the Discovery checklist, which is making sure that you're having a give and take conversation because nobody wants to be bombarded with questions. Even if they're really good questions. You need to add balance in the conversation. A couple of my favorite ways to add that balance and make it more give and take than interrogation style is through customer stories and context. Customer stories sprinkled into the conversation significantly improve the call tone while also building confidence in your solution. If I hear a problem they have that we've helped another customer solve, I love to share a story of how the other customer solved it before asking my current prospect how they're trying to solve it. I also love adding context with what I think is an almost magic phrase for removing the bombardment feeling. Which is the reason I ask is for example, if I'm asking around development and engineering, how are you balancing the speed of development with the risk of moving fast? The reason I ask is most VPs of engineering I talk to are sharing their pain and concern with the seemingly unrealistic demands they're getting from execs to immediately leverage AI in their products while ensuring no bugs or outages occur. Not only does this context break us away from the the the interrogation feeling, it also makes it more of a safe space for the prospect to share the struggles they're having because they feel like others have the same challenges and they don't feel as singled out as if you're just almost accusing them by asking very direct questions about their challenges. And then the fifth part of the Discovery checklist is to make sure that you are able and successfully sell next steps. Now, if you've nailed the first four parts of this checklist, you know their priority, you know how they're trying to solve it today, and you know where they're getting stuck, and you've done it without pissing them off, without irrelevant questions or coming across like you're interrogating them. Now you just need to understand where they want to go. You can ask questions like how will you measure success? Or how will you know that you've accomplished the priority we discussed? Or what do you think your process will look like when you're achieving the priority we discussed? Or if you want to take a more consultative approach, you can even teach a little bit Here are our customers going from your current state to accomplishing priority Often do this and then describe that desired after state. Now with either approach, if you can share some customer stories or evidence of how you can help them achieve their desired after state, you've won the discovery call and you've earned the right to ask for next steps. Depending on the complexity of your solution, the next steps are gonna vary. If it's more transactional, a demonstration of your product might make sense, and those next steps might proposed might sound like thanks for helping me better understand how you're working to achieve your priority. It sounds like we may be able to help you get there through. Then describe your after state with your product. I'd love to show you what that looks like in a custom demonstration. That way you can see for yourself if it would be an improvement. How's next Tuesday look? If you sell a more complex product, a deeper dive into the technical elements may be necessary and that might sound like things help me better understand how you're working to achieve the priority. So sounds like we may be able to help you get there through Describe again your after state. I want to show you how this would work as soon as possible, but I also want to make sure we show you exactly how it would fit into your environment. Let's grab another 45 minutes to go deeper into than whatever part of the current state you need to deeper understand. I'll bring in one of our solution engineers to make sure we completely understand your current approach and infrastructure. Now after going through this video, you have just about everything you need to go increase your discovery conversion rate. I hope I've made it simple, but it's still going to take time and practice to execute. And that's why I've created my discovery blueprint so you can have all of this in one place plus a couple extra tidbits that I couldn't fit into this this video. It's free and you can download it by clicking the link below. And you're also going to want to watch this video in X2.