Most people who walk into a car dealership aren’t ready to buy. They’re learning about different makes and models, checking out features, and asking about price. No one likes a hard sell from a car salesperson as soon as they walk onto the lot; they want information.
As we’ve learned from working with thousands of businesses, a discovery call is an opportunity to learn about your customer’s needs, express empathy for challenges they may be facing, and smoothly transition to showcasing why your solution can help them. It can be overwhelming for your team to handle consistently, which is why a discovery call template can be extremely effective.
In this article, we’ll share a discovery call template every member of your team can use, whether you’re a sales leader, founder, or business development executive. Once you’ve implemented this template, we’re confident you’ll be able to have more effective conversations with your prospects.
What is a discovery call?
A discovery call is the first conversation between a salesperson and a potential customer. Your goal isn’t to sell right away — it’s to determine if they’re a good fit for your product or service. Based on the outcome of the conversation, you could potentially move prospects further down your sales funnel.
During the call, you want to uncover the “why.” Why did the prospect reach out? This is crucial to identifying their needs and pain points.
What are the benefits of discovery calls?
Good discovery calls should qualify leads. By eliminating prospects that aren’t a good fit, you can focus more on those who are more likely to buy.
- Qualify buyers who have a real problem, versus those who are “window shopping.”
- Gauge customer interest by discussing the value proposition of specific features.
- Identify feature gaps if the buyer needs something you don’t offer.
The more you can get the buyer to talk, the better. You’ll learn more and reinforce the information you’ve given them about your product or service.
Want a ready-to-use discovery call template?
Download our discovery call template, which includes sample discovery call scripts and a discovery call checklist for you and your team to follow.
An expert-proven discovery call template
To make the most of your calls (and keep them consistent!), follow this discovery process to create a discovery call template:
1. Open the call with empathy
Prospective clients often reach out due to frustration or overwhelm. They may have reached a breaking point with their current solution, or their “home-grown” processes may no longer work. “Empathizing with what they’re going through and connecting with them on a human-to-human level is the first way salespeople can peel back a layer of the onion,” says Drew Johnson, Senior Product Specialist at Quo.
If you approach the call with empathy and genuine interaction (the opposite of a hard sell), you can build rapport. You can understand a prospect’s needs better, and they can open up about their specific challenges. Another benefit of this approach is that you can connect the dots between their current challenges and how your product can solve them as you move further through the sales process.
To uncover the “why” behind the call, ask questions about specific pain points, such as:
- “I noticed you mentioned [X pain point]. I’d love to hear more about why that’s not working for you.”
- “What are you hoping to achieve by making a change? Do you have specific business goals?”
- “How has this issue affected you/your team’s day-to-day operations?”
These questions will get customers to open up about their “why” and give you a starting point to ask more specific questions and discuss features.
2. Ask discovery call questions that get them talking
After you’ve identified the “why,” you should transition to “why now?” questions. Did something change at the prospect’s company that prompted them to reach out?
If a potential client doesn’t have a good reason for “why now,” they may only be window shopping. Maybe the issues aren’t urgent enough to take action or they haven’t budgeted any money for a solution yet. While you can still provide information so the prospect can keep you in mind for the future, they’re not a serious buyer.
Prioritize topics like timeline/urgency, budget, and decision-making authority as you make your way through the discovery meeting. At the same time, keep it conversational. Asking good open-ended questions can encourage more guarded prospects to open up. For example:
- “How did you hear about us?” (as a starting point)
- “What prompted you to start looking for a solution now?”
- “How soon are you looking to find a solution for [X pain point]?”
- “Do you have a budget for a solution?”
- “Are you the decision-maker, or will other stakeholders be involved in the decision-making process?”
The answers to these questions should guide you through the rest of the call. Engage in active listening so you fully understand what’s most important to the buyer. Rather than covering all of your product’s features, you can target your responses to the prospect’s specific needs.
3. Smoothly transition to the solution
When doctors uncover a patient’s ailment, they prescribe a solution. You can think of the next part of your discovery call template like offering a prescription: “If you take this, you will feel better.” Prescriptions tie your features directly to the prospect’s pain points.
At Quo, one pain point we see in our discovery calls is that prospects share text messages by taking screenshots and sending them to their colleagues. Our sales reps highlight Quo’s shared phone numbers and internal threads as a direct (and much easier) solution to the problem. We can demonstrate this to the prospect and ask for their feedback.
A couple of ways to offer a prescription to your prospects smoothly:
- “You mentioned [X pain point] — what if you could skip doing that with our [Y feature]?”
- “Since [X pain point] is slowing you down, it might make sense to show you how [Y feature] speeds that up.”
As you demonstrate your product or talk about your service, try to get the prospect to agree with the solution by asking questions like, “Can you see your team using this?” This gets them to confirm that the use cases you’re showing them would meet their needs.
Another approach you can take when transitioning to a solution is to provide successful case studies to prospects. If a prospect in a particular vertical mentions a challenge they’re facing, you can mention how an existing customer used your product to overcome that challenge and give a real-time demo to show it in action.
Here’s a script to demonstrate this approach: “Similar businesses have solved [X pain point] with [Y feature]. Can I show you how it works?”
This acts as a playbook for prospects and provides them with an actionable workflow they can use.
4. Close the call with a plan to follow up
If you determine the prospect is potentially a good fit for your solution, you should establish next steps — regardless of the customer’s readiness to buy.
“Never leave a discovery call without alignment on how the call went and next steps,” says Drew. “There’s always going to be some mutual form of next steps, whether the customer is reviewing something or you agree to reconnect on XYZ date and send a follow-up email.
You can ask a few closing questions to determine if you’re aligned:
- “How are you feeling about this so far? Does it align with what you’re looking for?”
- “Is there anything you want to see that we haven’t covered yet?
- “If this feels like a good fit, the next step is usually [product demo/trial/quote]. Should we get that on the calendar?”
A follow-up within two or three days is reasonable for small to medium-sized businesses. If you’re talking to larger organizations, you’ll want to allow seven days since internal approvals can take longer.
You might determine that a text message is the right follow-up instead of a phone call or follow-up email. If you’re not sure what to send, check out our follow-up text message examples.
4 key reasons businesses use Quo for discovery calls
Quo has features that allow you to focus on your sales discovery calls and help you capture the information you need to follow-up later.
1. Capture every detail with call recordings and transcripts
Automatically record your calls and generate call summaries and transcripts so you don’t miss any customer details. You can review past calls by listening to the call recording or reading the transcript to review what was discussed. Our call summaries highlight the action items and next steps that were discussed in each call so you know what needs to be done before your next conversation.
You can also use a sales call recording and call transcript to refine your sales pitch or train your team to conduct better discovery calls.
If you send text messages to your prospects, those will also be captured in Quo. If a sales rep needs to take over a deal when a colleague is on vacation, they can review past calls and text threads and get up to speed efficiently. Check out our list of 80+ sales text message examples you can use as inspiration.
2. Stay organized and save time with call tags
Surface opportunities to improve your team’s performance over time with AI call tags. It uses AI to analyze your phone calls and assigns custom labels that matter to you and your team.
Here are a few examples of where you can use call tags to help with sales discovery:
- Lead prioritization: Create tags like “🔥Hot Lead” and “❄️Cold Lead” to automatically identify prospects based on buying signals. You could tag a call as a “Hot Lead” when it detects phrases like “We need this implemented by Q1”. Tagging discovery calls this way can help your team prioritize deals.
- Competitor tracking: Create tags for each of your competitors. Your team can see whether their competitive positioning is working and understand where they can refine their differentiation strategy.
- Deal complexity: Use tags like “👥 Multiple Stakeholders” or “✅ Single Decision Maker” to understand deal complexity. This helps sales reps know whether they need to request additional meetings with stakeholders or can move forward with the current contact.
Go even further by filtering your calls based on multiple call tags. Identify patterns between multiple call tags and adjust your call scripts and deal strategies based on insights you find.
3. Collaborate with colleagues using internal threads
Follow up on your post-call action items with internal threads. Tag colleagues in a call recording so they can get up to speed and strategize next steps right next to your call summary. It’s a more efficient method of sales collaboration instead of taking the conversation to another app.
Sales professionals can also use internal threads to ask questions to their teammates or supervisors, such as, “Has this ever come up on a sales discovery call before?” which will help them better prepare for future conversations.
4. Sync insights automatically with CRM integrations
Connect Quo with Salesforce, HubSpot, or other CRMs to automatically log your customer conversations. Contact details from your CRM can be synced to Quo, and call information can be synced from Quo to your CRM. That way, you have all the context you need as you work to close deals.
For example, if you’ve identified a lead owner in Salesforce, you can sync that information to Quo so you don’t have to switch back and forth between systems.
If your CRM doesn’t have an integration with Quo, you can use our Zapier and Make integrations to connect Quo and your CRM, or you can build a custom integration with the Quo API.
Conduct smoother discovery calls with Quo (formerly OpenPhone)
The technology you use to conduct discovery calls should make your sales call planning process easier. Capturing accurate information, organizing calls, and tracking deals in your CRM — these are all critical to managing your sales cycle. The more prepared you are for follow-up communications, the more you’ll build trust with prospective clients.
Quo makes managing your discovery calls easy with sales AI tools such as automatic call recordings, AI call summaries and transcripts, and AI call tags. You can use Quo as a lightweight CRM by creating custom properties within contacts, or automate call logging with a CRM you already use.
See how Quo can benefit your sales team by signing up for a seven-day free trial.
