Discovery Questions Should Respect Your Prospect’s Stage In The Buying Journey

One-word responses to discovery questions are THE WORST.

The data prove it out. According to Gong Labs, there’s a strong link between buyers’ response lengths and closed deals.

The key: Provide your buyer the signal(s) that you want a lengthy response...

Asking (more, better) questions translates well to the most successful reps.

Too many sales discovery questions (15+), and you are running an interrogation. Too few, and you’re unlikely to unearth what matters – pain points.

Aim for between 11 and 14 targeted questions per call.

During the solution development stage, your buyer is gathering data and information. They want – need – to build their case for their boss, their team, and even themselves. 

They need to justify if and how a solution will fix their problem.

Ask questions that...

To demo or not to demo. That is the decision during a sales discovery call.

A “yes to demo” moves the buyer out of the discovery phase of the journey and into an active sales contact.

Decisions are made by the committee. Understanding who’s a part of the decision and what their priori...

Using your prospect’s own words.

We call this technique mirroring: repeating the last 2-3 words or the most critical words your prospect says. 

But it’s not just repeating a few words. You also need to turn their words into a question by upwardly inflecting their phra...

A sales discovery call is a conversation, a discussion. It is not an interrogation. 

So don’t start a new thread with each question. Instead, go deep. Your follow-up question should be natural – again, like a real conversation.

Base your next question on what your buyer just t...

It’s also entirely possible – even likely – a buyer will ENTER the funnel at this stage. Inbound leads – demo form fills, sales inquiries, chatbot “I’d like to speak with a sales rep” replies, and so on.

A buyer in the active pain stage has an evident, well-defined pain. They know something...

Latent pain: The first stage of the buyer’s journey.

The buyer is aware they have a problem but is not quite ready to do anything about it. Said another way, their business challenge is an annoyance, but not something worth investing time/resources/money into … yet.