Sales success depends on asking the right questions and listening carefully to your customers during initial discovery calls. These conversations help you determine which prospects are worth pursuing and which might waste valuable time and resources.
Practicing active listening on these calls will also give you deeper insights into your prospects, so you can customize your pitches later in the sales process if you qualify them as valuable leads.
This guide offers 10 essential questions you can ask during discovery calls to streamline your qualification process and build a robust sales pipeline.
Why Does Qualifying Leads Matter in Sales?
Discovery calls are a crucial first step in your sales process. During these conversations, you can gather essential information about your potential customers, their needs, and their challenges.
Your initial interaction sets the stage for all future engagements and helps you determine if there's a good fit between the prospect and your solution.
Qualifying your leads during these conversations is vital for managing your pipeline. It helps you:
- Focus your time and resources on the most promising opportunities.
- Identify potential roadblocks early in your sales process.
- Customize your approach to each prospect's specific needs.
- Improve your overall conversion rates.
- Reduce the time you might waste on unqualified leads.
A well-qualified pipeline ensures that you direct your sales efforts toward prospects with the highest likelihood of becoming customers. This approach increases efficiency, improves forecasting accuracy, and drives revenue growth.
Understanding the Prospect's Needs
1. What are your current pain points or challenges?
This question gets to the heart of your prospect's needs. Ask them about their biggest problems, and pay attention to the explicit and implicit challenges they mention. Listen carefully to their responses, because they will guide your entire sales approach.
You can make this question even more effective by personalizing it based on research you've done about the prospect's company or industry. This personalization technique — similar to what you might use in sales emails — shows that you've done your homework and are genuinely interested in their specific situation. For more tips on personalizing your communication, check out our article on sales email personalization.
2. How are you currently addressing these challenges?
When you ask this question, you uncover valuable information about your prospect's existing solutions or strategies. This insight helps you understand their current approach and identify potential gaps where your product or service can add value.
If you’re using Meeting AI to conduct research before your discovery call, you might already have some of this information. Meeting AI automates prospect research and provides insights on companies and contacts ahead of scheduled meetings.
Assessing Potential Fit with Your Solution
3. What goals are you looking to achieve in the next 6-12 months?
This question helps you understand your prospect's short-term objectives and priorities. Once you know their objectives, you can demonstrate how your solution can help them achieve these targets more effectively or efficiently (and in turn, how you can deliver a better ROI than their current solution).
This alignment is crucial for positioning your offering as a valuable asset to their future success, rather than just another hassle or expense.
4. How do you measure success in this area?
How does your prospect define success? This question uncovers their key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. This is another question that helps you align your pitch with your potential customer’s specific goals.
Your prospect might focus on quantitative measures like revenue growth or cost reduction, or qualitative factors like customer satisfaction. Understanding their benchmarks enables you to highlight how your product or service impacts these metrics and delivers ROI.
Decoding the Decision-Making Structure
5. Who else is involved in making this decision?
To move prospects through your sales pipeline, you need to understand the decision-making structure in their organization. What stakeholders will be involved in making the purchasing decisions?
Your sales efforts may involve convincing technical evaluators, financial approvers, or executive sponsors. Ask about each stakeholder's role and influence within the company.
When you know who you need to persuade, you can prepare targeted materials for each stakeholder to address their specific concerns. This information also shows the complexity of the sales cycle for this prospect, and reveals potential champions who can advocate for your solution.
6. What is your timeline for making a decision?
This question helps you gauge the prospect's sense of urgency and align your sales approach accordingly. Are they in a hurry to find a new solution, or do they have a problem that’s not important, but not urgent?
Ask questions to help you figure out their timeline, then pace your follow-ups appropriately. Customize your proposal to fit their decision-making schedule. If they have a pressing deadline, you can emphasize your product's fast implementation potential, or immediate benefits.
For longer timelines, you might focus on building the relationship and providing more in-depth information over time. You can maintain contact with the prospect without making them a top priority on your list of leads.
Determining the Prospect’s Budget and Resources
7. What budget have you allocated for this solution?
One of the most important things to assess in a discovery call is the prospect’s financial readiness. Approach this topic sensitively, as some prospects might hesitate to disclose budget details early on.
If they're reluctant, you could ask about budget ranges or how they've approached similar purchases in the past. Knowing their budget helps you offer appropriate options. It also reveals any gaps between their expectations and your pricing. This allows you to address pricing issues early or determine if the lead isn't a good fit.
Addressing Objections and Barriers
8. What concerns do you have about implementing a new solution?
One of your most important jobs in discovery calls is to address objections. Asking about prospects’ concerns encourages people to voice their hesitations, whether they're related to cost, integration challenges, staff training, or disruption to current operations. Listen carefully to their responses — they provide valuable insights into the prospect's priorities and pain points.
After actively listening to the potential issues, address concerns proactively and offer specific examples of how your solution has overcome similar challenges for other customers. This approach builds trust and demonstrates your commitment to finding the right solution for their unique situation, rather than just pushing for a sale.
Next Steps and Follow-Up
9. What additional information would be helpful as you evaluate our solution?
This question invites prospects to guide the conversation toward areas they find most valuable. It shows you're attentive to their specific needs and willing to provide relevant information. Their response might reveal gaps in their understanding of your product, or highlight features they're particularly interested in.
You can use this opportunity to offer additional resources, like case studies, product demos, or detailed spec sheets that address their concerns. Then you can identify the most appropriate next steps in your sales process.
10. What are the next steps from here?
Before you close out your discovery call, clarify your prospect’s intentions and set clear expectations for what will happen next.
Ask about next steps directly, to prompt them to commit to a specific action, whether it's scheduling a demo, reviewing a proposal, or introducing you to other stakeholders. Their response gives you insight into their level of interest and the potential timeline for a decision.
It also allows you to guide the process if they're unsure, and potentially suggest appropriate next steps based on your conversation. Make sure to agree on concrete actions and timeframes, so you can maintain momentum in the sale process.
Essential Questions for Qualifying Leads on Discovery Calls
These ten questions help you qualify leads and move prospects through the sales pipeline stages more quickly and efficiently.
Looking for more ways to refine your lead qualification process? Meeting AI automates prospect research to give you comprehensive information about your prospects and their organizations before every discovery call.
With Meeting AI, you'll go into each conversation well-prepared, so you can skip basic information-gathering and focus on building relationships and addressing specific pain points.
Get a free trial of Meeting AI to see how you can combine automated prep with smart conversations to identify and pursue your best opportunities in every discovery call.
