The discovery call is the first call you have with a prospect after they express interest. During the call, you qualify their buying potential. The focus of the discovery call is to identify whether or not the prospect is a good fit for you and your business. You also discover their needs, problems they face and how you can help them.
After the discovery call, you then have a decision to make. You either add them to your lead pipeline and pursue the deal, or, if they are not a good fit for your business after the discovery process, drop them from your deal flow. If they are not the right fit, you may gain insights of how another company may be able to help them.
A discovery call can vary widely depending on what you offer. Discovery calls look different for a lawyer, potential investor, someone selling a physical product or with a real estate agent, to name a few examples.
Sales discovery calls are more specific versions of the discovery call. The primary motivation of a sales discovery call is to take leads or prospects, qualify them for your product or service, and move them towards closing.
The discovery call is not a call but rather a process. Every moment, from when they are first aware of your brand until closing, is part of the sales discovery process. With that said, we are going to focus on the call itself. We expand into the discovery process as a whole below.
1 Building trust
Establishing trust with the prospect is crucial in sales discovery calls. This involves building rapport, being genuine, and demonstrating credibility to gain the prospect’s trust and create a foundation for a successful sales conversation.
Demonstrating authority and expertise in the industry or product/service being discussed helps establish credibility and confidence in the salesperson. This can be achieved through industry knowledge, case studies, testimonials, or sharing relevant success stories.
Setting clear expectations with the prospect about the purpose, agenda, and desired outcomes of the sales discovery call helps align both parties and ensures a productive conversation. If you don’t manage expectations, you risk the entire relationship of the customer with your business. This includes clarifying the purpose of the call, discussing the agenda, and mutually agreeing on next steps.
The most important part of lead qualification is understanding the prospects needs. The salesperson should focus on actively listening to the prospect’s needs, challenges, and pain points during the discovery call. Understanding the prospect’s needs and requirements helps tailor the sales pitch and offer relevant solutions, ultimately increasing the chances of a successful sales outcome.
A discovery call agenda is designed to provide an outline. By having an agenda with clear steps on every call, you set yourself and reps up for a successful discovery call. There are multiple steps in the process, beginning with pre-meeting materials all the way through post-call follow-up.
When necessary, sending information before the call builds rapport. Great discovery calls start with the lead qualification, making sure the prospect is the right fit for what you offer.
This may include relevant case studies, what engagement with your team looks like, qualifying questions, and more.
Remember, good discovery begins during the preparation phase! Know their industry, competitors, customers in order to provide more value when you have a discovery meeting with them. Based on close rate data, the more you know about the prospect’s situation before the call, the more likely the deal is to close.
Note: The actual agenda and duration of each section is supposed to vary. Depending on the prospect’s responses and the dynamics of the call, different areas will receive more or less focus. It’s important to be flexible and adapt the agenda to the prospect’s needs. Ultimately, you need to ensure a productive and engaging conversation.
Without next steps, the sales process dies the moment you click end-call. You don’t want that to happen, as that means a deal is never closed. On the call, you need clear next steps that will be taken to move the deal forward.
After the meeting, you have a much higher close rate if you send a recap of the meeting, what was discussed, and the purchase process moving forward. Sales leaders make sure both the agent and potential buyer have a smooth, simple process that leads to closing. What are the pains, what are the needs, and how can you provide them solutions?
Discovery doesn’t start when you pick up the phone, nor does it end once the meeting finishes. The discovery process begins the very first moment they become aware of your company, and continuously evolves even after they are a customer. Here are 9 discovery call tips to perfect the process:
In any business, the majority of prospects will have similar questions. The more specific your ideal customer, the easier it is to predict and prepare for these questions. You need to be prepared for whatever comes your way, after all, you don’t want to work with a business that is not both easy to work with and professional when you bring up potential issues
In order to have a great discovery call, you need to ask the right questions.
Review the Game Film: Professional athletes watch game film to improve their ability to read the game, and anticipate their opponents (anticipate objections). By reviewing insights,
Playback your calls: As difficult as it may be, reps who listen to their calls perform better. It’s just data. If you don’t listen to your or your reps game film (calls/meetings), there’s little chance for improvement.
Review calls with your team: Practice makes improvement. Reviewing calls with your team gives you the opportunity to highlight the good, and teach best practices.
Identify both strengths and pitfalls of your sales process: Every sales process needs constant care. Adding in new touch points, correcting the script, and changing outreach strategy. These insights guide you to make appropriate changes to your discovery process that lead to closed revenue.
Role play: Lastly, put what you learn into practice. Without practice, the next sales opportunity may pass you by. Role play with a manager, coworker or someone else to cement what you learn into action.
Use artificial intelligence tools: As a sales leader, is can be difficult to manage everything. This is where technology comes in. Transcribing every call, AI monitoring, lead scoring and rep performance reports, all come to you automatically using sales tools.
Make notes of where sales calls can improve. As you listen, you can point out:
Help create a culture of sharing. You want your employees to hear champion calls from your best reps. Tools such as Convirza make this easy. Listening to calls will help you identify trends. You may compile a list of common questions to ask, or responses to common questions. Make sure your entire team has those details as a reference for every call.
If you want your sales team, sales coaches or others on your QA team to listen to calls, you need to lead by example. Lead by example and others will follow suit. Make sure you have a specific amount of time set apart each day you can listen to calls.
To increase team cohesion, listen to calls alongside reps. This will help them recognize what can be done to improve from your perspective.
Every organization has its process for providing feedback on sales calls. This may be documented with bulleted lists, AI analysis, a call flow, or another method. This constructive feedback should be for positive and negative calls, regardless of the outcome.
Salespeople are people, too, although it may not always seem that way when you get a cold call. Salespeople appreciate feedback and the opportunity to improve. For most salespeople, this affects their livelihood. They can close more deals and make more in commission as a result.
As a manager, it’s your responsibility to provide learning opportunities for your sales team. If you want help with coaching, sales enablement, and empowering your salespeople, Convirza is here to help.
Your sales discovery process is greatly enhanced when you can review call recordings. Sales recording software automatically transcribes conversations. After the fact, sales managers and agents can search transcripts for key moments and improvement opportunities or create a library of best practices. Conversation analytics provides key insights and data on every call for both inbound and outbound calls.
As a sales manager, this is extremely helpful. With tools like Convirza, you can create a library of specific moments on recorded calls. This can include champion calls, calls with unique objections, or training moments. Recording your calls also allows for call scoring and lead scoring. Call scoring enables AI to review and score any sales rep calls. Lead scoring provides insights into sentiment analysis, why the customer is calling, and how likely they are to close. This is valuable marketing information that can be used to get more of your best leads.
Regarding technology, find a conversation intelligence platform that gives you complete visibility into every customer. Other tools like Call Tracking and Marketing Attribution Data empower sales teams to boost close rates.
In the age of AI, there are constant improvements in the world of technology. This makes a manager, marketer, CEO, and agent’s lives much easier. Evaluate every call, pull data and insights from each interaction, and analyze how that data can be applied to make positive changes using technology. Know precisely what happens in every part of the sales and customer service process.
It’s pointless to spend money and not get results. If you don’t see metrics improving, changes need to be made. Technology allows you to monitor every step of the customer journey and make appropriate changes. This data and more can be accessed using Convirza’s technology suite.
With that said, consistent improvement is important to ensure results. AI coaching and in-person training help reinforce concepts that lead to closes.
This is your game. Professional athletes study their game film to see where they can improve.
Record: Make sure all your sales interactions are recorded. This includes emails, chats, and of course, calls. Without recording, you can’t get the information you need to improve.
Review: Recordings don’t mean much if they spend all their time in a dropbox without being used. Review your calls with others on your team, your manager, or by yourself. Give yourself the opportunity to hear and learn from previous calls.
Revamp: Make changes to your approach. Did you not ask the right questions? Did you handle their objection poorly, which led to the deal being lost? Did you use data to see how much you were talking, or things you may have missed that could help contribute to a close?
Discovery calls are the initial impression that any prospect has with your company. From a prospect’s point of view, the best the company has to offer is whatever they see. If you don’t deliver during initial contact, capturing leads and keeping the sales pipeline flowing will be tough. If you need help to perfect your discovery calls beyond this ultimate guide, talk with us to see how your close rates and more will improve.
Book A Quick 15 Minute Call,
And We’ll Show You How To Unlock The Power Of Every Conversation.
©2024 All rights reserved – Convirza
