How to Conduct a Sales Discovery Call to Gain New Bookings

Sales discovery calls are a fantastic way to bring in new clients, especially high-quality prospects who begin their journey having established a solid relationship with your company and team. 

Converting customers through sales discovery calls can significantly improve brand loyalty and customer retention rates.

That is, assuming your tactics are successful. 

If your calls aren’t quite hitting the right note, keep reading. Here, we’ll explore actionable ways to improve future conversations and bring in more high-quality conversions. Plus, we’ll explain how to avoid common pitfalls that send sales discovery calls south.

What is a sales discovery call?

Sales discovery calls involve a sales rep talking a potential customer through what their product can offer and the benefits it can bring them. At the same time, the prospect has a unique opportunity to ask questions and express their specific needs. 

Let’s say, for example, that you’re running a beauty business. Sales discovery calls act like mini-consultations, helping you to understand what the client wants, talking through what you can do for them, and laying out the groundwork for future beauty treatment. 

If you’re using video, you can discuss things like the customer’s skin type and features and give a detailed idea of what’s possible and what treatments would suit their needs, and so on.

Ideally, your discovery call will end with the client booking an in-person consultation or even scheduling a treatment. It’s a great way to get to know people before they become your official client and establish a solid foundation for your ongoing brand/client relationship.

Why are discovery calls important?

Discovery calls have a lot of benefits both for businesses and clients. Here are just a few of them:

• Building relationships: Discovery calls are a fantastic way to meet prospects and lay the groundwork for a strong, reciprocal rapport.
• Customer insights: Sales discovery calls provide a wealth of information about who your customers are and what they want. This is a huge help when it comes to marketing, product development, and brand growth. Effectively integrating the insights from these calls into your sales campaigns can enhance targeting and personalization, leading to more successful outcomes.
• Customer services: Discovery calls tell you a lot about the tones and conversational techniques that appeal most to your customers. They also tell you about the kinds of concerns your customers might have about your brand and/or its offering.

What’s the secret to successful discovery calls?

Picking up the phone to potential clients can be nerve-wracking. Preparation is everything. Here’s what you need to know to ensure your calls result in more hooks and less hang-ups.

Book appointments

When scouting for potential clients, use a sales prospecting tool to identify promising prospects that are most likely to convert. Whether your initial contact is an email, social media ad, or your website, you should include an appointment scheduling link so clients can book a meeting with just one click. 

Why? Because while cold calling sometimes works, you're more likely to get results if you schedule an appointment. 

For B2B sales, scheduling discovery calls looks professional. And in both B2B and B2C contexts, this gives you time to dig into customer data, do some pre-call research, and prepare tailored questions.

Discovery calls usually take place 1-2 weeks after initial contact, giving both parties time to research and prepare.

Tools like TIMIFY mean your leads can schedule an appointment at a time that suits them. The ease and convenience this brings will get your sales discovery process off to a great start. This also means prospects will receive automated reminders ahead of time.

Additionally, integrating master scheduler software can further optimize the scheduling process, ensuring that all parties receive timely reminders and updates, thus enhancing both participation and preparation for these crucial calls.

Use a flexible discovery call template

A discovery call script helps sales reps to prepare and stick to an agenda. It also guides prospects through to conversion in ways that you know work. 

That said, you should build flexibility into your script/template. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all sales process. Each conversation will be unique to that prospect, so it should be tailored to their needs. 

These calls are a way for prospects to connect with the humans behind your brand. A rigid discovery call template will result in a robotic, unnatural conversation that's unlikely to endear your team to potential customers. 

So, create a list of questions that will lead the potential client towards conversion, but which also leaves plenty of room for conversational detours.

Train your reps to keep conversations on track if they veer off-script – we’ll talk about this in more detail later.

Pick the right technology

As we mentioned, the human element is at the core of this approach. Prospective customers will be encouraged to convert through human warmth, rapport, and enthusiasm. 

But that doesn't mean you should neglect technology. The right tools can support and empower human representatives.

For example, AI-powered conversation intelligence tools provide valuable insights into customer needs and even mood in real-time. This helps your sales agents to adjust their tone and pivot their angle towards the customer's immediate needs.

Conversational AI can also spot growing trends in customer conversations across your entire communications solution (for example, a particular keyword that crops up a lot) and flag this. Many will also come equipped with analytical capabilities. Retrospectively, this means your team can better understand clients’ concerns and where your sales calls are going wrong, allowing them to improve future conversations.

In addition, utilizing advanced contract management systems can streamline the process of organizing, tracking, and fulfilling contractual agreements made during these calls, ensuring that both parties adhere to the terms discussed.

Train sales reps

Sales reps are the beating heart of your sales process and the biggest influence on your potential customer's decision-making process. 

So you want to nurture their talents. Team members with strong conversational and listening skills are more likely to have an impact. They should be able to quickly pick up on social cues and have the charisma to deliver effective discovery questions in ways that build relationships with prospects rather than making them feel pushed into sales.

Ensure they are supported with all of the right resources and tools to do the job well. And offer regular training in everything from sales skills to best practices for writing follow-up emails.

Consider incentivizing your sales team by rewarding top-performing reps, too. You'll quickly gather a team that can build rapport during sales discovery calls and establish strong customer relationships right from the start.

Review each call 

Analytics should be a strong element of every outbound calling strategy. They don’t just tell you how successful your strategy is currently. It can also give you insights into things like:

• Whether or not your discovery calls are improving (and why)
• Which of your reps get consistent results or need extra support
• Consistency in your reps’ performance
• Patterns and trends in your discovery calls – for example, a particular topic suddenly coming up a lot or a sudden increase in conversions. 
• Who your best prospects are and the kinds of discovery call techniques they respond to

Being able to create call reports and analyze the results will prove invaluable for identifying bottlenecks and ironing them out. Review every single call and compile relevant metrics that align with your goals. 

Follow up

Outreach doesn’t stop once you hang up the phone. Not following-up (or a poor follow-up) can seriously hinder your success.  

So, build a solid follow-up strategy.

A follow-up call is always a good idea, but if your prospect doesn’t like (or have time for) phone calls, a follow-up email can also be effective. In fact, many organizations build follow-up emails into each customer’s email journey towards conversion. 

Your follow-up approach is equally crucial, so make sure to:

• Recap what was discussed in the discovery call
• Acknowledge any concerns the prospect raised and how you can provide a solution 
• Address questions left open at the end of the discovery call
• Outline the next steps
• Provide a clear and accessible call-to-action

Things to avoid in sales discovery calls

Now you have a decent idea of what you should do to make your sales outreach effective. But it’s also important to understand what not to do. 

Talking over the prospect

We get it: you’re passionate about what you do and want clients to know how amazing you are. It’s tempting to go all out with your sales spiel (especially if you have a lot of points to make). But talking over a prospect won’t get you anywhere. At best, it’s frustrating for the prospect; at worst, it can seem threatening. This is not the tone you’re going for!

Instead, maintain a natural, two-way conversation. If the prospect doesn’t seem inclined to talk, prompt them with open-ended questions. Let them express their needs and concerns, and listen carefully before addressing the points they bring up.

This kind of give-and-take helps to build trust and rapport, which in turn encourages the prospect to convert.

Overpromising

Making promises you cannot keep may help you to get conversions in the short term, but it will come back to bite you in the long run. 

Remember, businesses don't thrive on new customers alone. Customer retention is the most valuable thing you can aim for—and there are few quicker ways to tank your customer retention rates than by reneging on promises.

What's more, customers that leave in disappointment once they realize you cannot deliver on the promises made in your discovery call won't leave quietly. They're likely to vent their frustrations in reviews, on social media, and more. Your reputation will suffer and your overall conversion rate will drop as a result.

​​​​​​​Overselling

Talking over the prospect and overpromising both tie into the perennial problem of ‘overselling’. Avoid pushing a particular product or service aggressively and making exaggerated claims about its benefits. 

Whether in a B2C or B2B call, it can be hard to strike a balance between being enthusiastic about your product and ‘overselling’–especially as that balance changes from prospect to prospect. What one prospect will experience as passion and dedication to your brand, another will experience as pushiness and aggression.

This is one reason why it’s so important to train your sales reps. People with good listening skills and high levels of emotional intelligence will understand the right tonal balance to strike with each individual customer. They’ll be able to convey enthusiasm without teetering over that blurry line, and encourage even the most reticent customers into conversion.

6 examples of discovery call questions

Here are some ideas of questions to put in your discovery call script:

• “Tell me about yourself/your company’s current situation.” The aim here is to build rapport and gain a greater understanding of how your product/service is relevant to the prospect’s needs. Be sure to balance this by showing that you’ve done your research about the company you’re pitching to.
• “What are your goals?” Asking people what their business goals are or what they’d like to achieve with your product/service helps you to qualify the lead. For example, urgent goals or goals that only your product/service can help with indicate a higher quality lead.
• “Why are you interested in our solution?” This helps you to understand how you can assist the customer and gives you an opportunity to expand upon (or dispel!) ideas the customer has about your product/service.
• “What would a good result look like for you?” This helps you to tailor your solution to the customer’s particular needs. It’s also a lead-in to share results from case studies of previous customers with similar goals.
• “What timescale are you looking at for taking up this solution?” Again, this helps to qualify the lead.
• “When would be a good time to follow up?” Having a solid follow-up plan in place is a great way to move your sales cycle onto the next stage.

Use sales discovery calls to bring in high-quality leads

Sales discovery calls are a valuable tool in your sales arsenal. Getting them right is a brilliant way to bring in high-quality customers that start their journey with you on the right footing. 

These communication tools establish a solid foundation for a lasting relationship with each new prospect, standing them in good stead for the rest of their time as your customer.

By following the tips we’ve provided here, you can make successful calls that convert every time. Time to get dialing!