Discovery Call: 6-Step Guide and 15 Questions To Ask

In sales, success hinges on mastering pivotal moments. The discovery call is the turning point where potential transforms into a tangible sales opportunity. 

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In this article, we're getting straight to the point, highlighting the central role of the discovery call in the sales process and giving you everything you need to know to successfully navigate one.

We’ll unpack the significance of the discovery call, map out the route to success, and equip you with a tactical arsenal of example questions you can use. Let’s dive in.

Table of Contents

What is a discovery call? 

A discovery call is a pivotal initial conversation in sales. During it, a representative engages with a potential client to understand their needs and introduce the company's services. The primary goal of this call is to identify high-quality prospects and determine if there is a potential match. If so, the aim is to move them further down the sales pipeline.

During the call, the representative focuses on two main objectives: comprehending the prospect's challenges and goals and allowing the prospect to gain insights into what the company offers. This dual approach helps assess whether the prospect is a good fit for the company's solutions and sets the stage for a successful and mutually beneficial business relationship.

The discovery call is thus a critical step that initiates a give-and-take dynamic, fostering a strong, understanding relationship between the sales representative and the prospect. Through this interaction, the representative can effectively guide potential clients toward a deeper engagement with the company's products or services — ultimately increasing the likelihood of successful conversions.

What makes a discovery call so important 

Discovery calls act as the first step in establishing successful client relationships. These calls are not just preliminary chats but are key to understanding client needs and setting the foundation for future interactions.

Here are the key benefits of discovery calls for international businesses:

Identify qualified leads

Discovery calls help businesses identify which leads have the highest potential to become customers. This prioritization ensures that efforts are concentrated on the most promising opportunities.

By understanding which prospects are genuinely interested and have needs that align with the business’s offerings, resources can be allocated more efficiently, optimizing the sales process.

Get a better understanding of your customers

Discovery calls provide deep insights into clients’ specific challenges and objectives. 

Understanding clients' specific requirements through discovery calls leads to more effective engagement, as interactions are based on a solid understanding of their needs and expectations.

Fine-tune your sales strategy

Armed with the insights from discovery calls, you can develop fine-tuned sales strategies to each client's context and needs, making the approach more relevant and impactful.

6 steps to run a successful discovery call 

Here’s how you can run a successful discovery call in 6 easy steps.

Step 1: Do your research

Before initiating contact, it's imperative to thoroughly research your point of contact and their business.

Gather comprehensive information about your prospect's industry, company size, and challenges. Utilize tools like LinkedIn, company websites, and industry reports. If you're calling a small e-commerce business, understanding their market positioning and competitors can provide valuable insights.

This step will help you prepare to qualify your leads and prepare for the next steps of the process.

Step 2: Set a clear call agenda

In this step, you prepare to guide the prospect throughout the call.

Start the call with a brief and friendly introduction of yourself and your role. This introduction sets a welcoming tone for the conversation and lets the prospect get to know you better from the start.

It's crucial to articulate the purpose and objectives of the call clearly. This informs the prospect about what to expect and aligns their expectations with the goals of the conversation.

Step 3: Establish a two-way rapport 

Remember, while qualifying the prospect, they also assess you. Building a genuine rapport through a two-way conversation is key to successful discovery calls.

Here are some techniques you can use for building rapport:

• Use open-ended questions: Encourage sharing through questions like "What challenges are you facing?" or "What are your goals for this year?”
• Demonstrate empathy and active listening: Show genuine care and understanding. Reflect and acknowledge their concerns, e.g., "It seems like these challenges are quite frustrating for you."
• Utilize positive affirmations: Use affirming statements like "That's a great point" to validate the prospect's thoughts and opinions.

A recent study shows that customers speak during 57% of the conversation in successful discovery calls. Encourage your prospect to talk more by asking the right questions, which helps understand their needs better. We will go into more detail on this topic below.

Step 4: Focus on the prospect’s pain points

This stage requires a profound understanding of the challenges the prospect is facing, empathetic engagement, and the ability to align those challenges with your solutions effectively. 

You can achieve this by asking the right questions, focusing on topics such as:

• What specific issues are you currently encountering in your operations or processes?

• Are there any recurring problems that you find particularly challenging to overcome?

• Can you describe any pain points that have been a persistent concern for your team?

Once you've identified the challenges, the next step is to investigate how they affect their daily operations and long-term goals. This involves probing further to understand the implications and consequences of these challenges. 

Some relevant questions might include:

• How do these challenges impact your team's productivity and efficiency?

• How do these challenges affect your ability to meet your strategic objectives?

• Have there been any financial implications or missed opportunities due to these challenges?

By exploring the impact, you gain a comprehensive understanding of the challenges and help the prospect recognize the urgency of finding a solution.

Step 5: Guide the prospect toward the solution

Mastering the art of presenting your solution is critical to the discovery call. This step involves showcasing your product or service in a way that resonates with the prospect's unique needs and challenges.

Here are a few pitching tips to consider:

• Reiterate their challenges and demonstrate how your solution specifically addresses these.
• Remember that top performers discuss product features in only about 9% of their pitch, focusing instead on the value and benefits. 
• Incorporate case studies or testimonials that resonate with the prospect’s industry.
• Conclude with a specific next step, guiding the prospect toward a decision.

This personalized approach ensures your solution is presented effectively, addressing the prospect's needs and paving the way for a successful partnership.

Step 6: Don’t neglect the after-call review

An often overlooked but crucial step is reviewing the call. This involves analyzing the conversation, what went well, and areas for improvement. Reflect on the questions asked, the responses received, and the overall flow of the conversation.

Use our Discovery Call Scorecard to objectively assess the call's effectiveness.

In the fast-paced sales world, where first impressions matter greatly, mastering discovery calls is non-negotiable. 

These six essential steps, from research to post-call reviews, serve as your roadmap to success. They enable you to build trust, identify pain points, and effectively present solutions, ensuring your prospect's journey from potential client to satisfied customer is as smooth as possible.

The do’s and don'ts of discovery calls 

You now know how to run successful discovery calls and their importance. So let’s recap with some do’s and don’ts of discovery calls you should remember.

Do’s of discovery calls

A successful discovery call is built on a foundation of effective communication and rapport-building. Here are some tips to ensure a smooth and productive discovery call:

• Listen attentively to the prospect's responses. Show genuine interest in their challenges and goals.
• Use open-ended questions to encourage the prospect to share more about their needs and pain points. These questions often start with words like "how," "what," and "why."
• Show empathy for the prospect's situation. Understand their challenges from their perspective and convey your willingness to help.
• Tailor your approach to each prospect. Avoid a one-size-fits-all script and adapt your questions and solutions to their situation.
• Clearly articulate the value your product or service can provide. Highlight how it addresses the prospect's pain points and fulfills their needs.
• Instead of pushing your product, focus on educating the prospect. Help them understand how your solution can solve their problems.

Don’ts of discovery calls

To ensure a productive discovery call, avoiding some common pitfalls is important. Here are a few don'ts for discovery calls:

• Avoid dominating the conversation. Let the prospect speak and share their thoughts.
• Refrain from interrupting the prospect when they are speaking. Allow them to complete their thoughts before responding.
• Don't make assumptions about the prospect's needs. Always ask questions to uncover their specific challenges.
• Avoid overwhelming the prospect with too much information about your product or service. Keep it concise and relevant.
• Don't pressure the prospect into deciding the discovery call. Respect their timeline and decision-making process.
• Don't forget to follow up after the call. Send a personalized message or additional information as promised during the conversation.

By adhering to these do’s and don’ts, you can conduct discovery calls that build trust, uncover valuable insights, and set the stage for successful business relationships.

Discovery call questions to ask every prospect 

Top-performing reps ask 39% more questions during the discovery call.

As you can tell, asking questions is important to the success of discovery calls. Nevertheless, this is not an interrogation process. The questions help you guide the conversation and get the prospect to the ideal conclusion — they want to learn more about your solution.

Here are a few questions to ask during the discovery call. Of course, you can adapt the questions below to fit the context and add client or industry-specific questions.

Question Purpose What is your role in the team? What is your role in the team? How does your current process/product meet your needs? Identify satisfaction levels and potential gaps. What goal are you trying to achieve? Align your solution with their strategic objectives. What is preventing you from achieving your goals? Pinpoint specific challenges where your solution could be beneficial.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Directly address immediate needs with your product or service. Have you identified the source of your problem? Gauge their awareness of the issue and readiness for a solution. Have you looked at potential solutions? Understand their research depth and openness to new options. What would a successful outcome look like? Visualize their desired end state, aiding in tailoring your pitch.

What’s your timeline for implementing a solution?

Assess urgency and plan your proposal accordingly. How do you measure success in your role? Align your solution with their performance metrics. What’s your biggest concern about changing solutions? Address fears or objections they might have. Who else is involved in the decision-making process? Identify key stakeholders and their roles. What’s your budget for this solution? Ensure your solution is financially feasible for them. How has your team adapted to past changes or implementations? Gauge their adaptability and readiness for a new solution.

What’s the most important factor in choosing a new solution?

Prioritize features or benefits that matter most to them.

What's next? 

The discovery call is a crucial step in your sales process that sets the foundation for a successful and targeted sales approach. In this guide, we outlined the steps you can take to ensure these calls are strategic and successful.

You don’t have to do it all manually. Clari Copilot, our sales intelligence software, has your back.

Real-time assistance during discovery calls ensures a balanced dialogue and enables you to confidently tackle objections.

Clari Copilot's conversation intelligence platform goes beyond, allowing you to revisit call transcripts in an AI-driven manner. It consolidates data from CRM and dialer, providing actionable insights in a few clicks.

Ready to elevate your approach to discovery calls? Book a demo with Clari Copilot today and experience how it can redefine success in your sales game. 

Reimagining spaces as an interior designer can be so rewarding, especially when you see the look on your clients’ faces when you’ve transformed their space into a welcoming room.  
But what about the times when you totally miss the mark and clients aren’t so happy? … Awkward. You just about want the ground to swallow you up wondering where you went so unbelievably wrong. We’re sure many interior designers can relate!

A lot of the time it’s because you probably didn’t ask your clients the right questions to get to know them before you got started on your project.

Putting together an interior design questionnaire is one way to help you gather all the right information so you don’t end up with disappointed clients. In this post, we’ll share how a client questionnaire can help your interior design business and list 30 insightful questions you can include in your questionnaire.

Get our interior design questionnaire template

Content Snare helps you get the information you need from clients. When you use Content Snare, you’ll get access to our questionnaire template loaded with questions to get you started on your own client questionnaire.

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How can a client questionnaire help you nail your interior design project?

There are a few different reasons why creating an interior design questionnaire helps you in your design process.  

Set clear expectations

The questions you ask in your client questionnaire will help you get to know your new client and define exactly what it is that they expect from you. The more information you get on their specific tastes, design styles, special needs, personal preferences, and budget, the more specific your project proposal will be, and the less likely you are to completely miss the mark on what you deliver.

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Safe Financing Documents

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Fill in missing gaps

Sometimes you gather great information in your initial consultation or discovery call, but then new questions come up later on. An interior design questionnaire will help you fill in any missing gaps that exist after your design consultation so you’re fully prepared to deliver your best work.

Save time

You might be asking your clients about their preferences bit by bit every time you have a check-in meeting or a phone call, but you’d save yourself a whole lot of time if you centralized all their answers in one place. Sending clients your questionnaire helps your design business save tremendously on time spent in meetings and stay more organized.

Leave a good impression

Sending a new client your interior design questionnaire after your initial consultation shows that you have solid business processes in place and are doing your due diligence to understand their needs. As your client goes through your insightful questions, they’ll start to see the value of their investment in your services. All of this can work wonders for your reputation as an interior design business and help you get those referrals!

What questions should you ask clients in an interior design questionnaire?

Questions that assess the current situation

These questions help you get a feel for how well the space is currently working or not working for your client. Sometimes you uncover some elements of the room that your client is attached to and not looking to change. Use these questions to mark down their primary complaints and make a note of what you should probably leave alone.

1. What do you love about the current design/space?

2. What do you dislike about the current design?

3. Are there any furnishings, decor items, collections, or sentimental art pieces you absolutely want to keep?

Questions that determine the intended use of the space

These questions will help you paint yourself a picture of how your client wants to use their new space and what they’re looking to get out of your design. These are very important questions to ask before you dig into design preferences.

4. What does your family (or if a business - your team) normally do in this room?
- E.g. watching TV, playing with toys, brainstorming, having meetings, doing yoga, playing video games, reading.

5. Can you describe the ages and characteristics of who will be using the space?
- E.g. young children, remote workers, grandparents, boomers, teachers, mixed demographic of professionals.  

6. Do the users of this space have any hobbies or extracurricular activities that need to be factored into the design?
- E.g pilates, cooking, reading, yoga, meditation, daily naps, arts & crafts.

7. Do any users of this space have any special needs that need to be taken into account? - E.g. wheelchair accessibility, inability to reach high places, need for dim lighting, trouble with stairs.

8. What are your goals for the room/ space?
- E.g. a space for one sole purpose vs a space for mixed activities, a space where parents can work while surprising children, a space that encourages collaboration and creative brainstorming.

9. What are your technical needs for this space?
- E.g. surround sound, wifi, home theater, computers, projector, smartboard, hidden cables

Questions that assess your clients’ design style

Ask these questions to narrow in on exactly what your clients like and don’t like when it comes to design.

A heads up - not every client will have the descriptive vocabulary to be able to communicate exactly what you want. It’s on you to help give them some ideas. For these questions, we recommend including both multiple-choice options with some ideas as well as open-ended questions so they can get more specific or mention other ideas that aren’t on your list of options.

10. What colours do you like? 
- e.g. neutrals, pastels, blacks, olive greens, ocean colours, bold colours

11. Are there any colour combinations you like?

12. What colours do you dislike?
- e.g. yellows, mustard, dark colours, overly bright colours

13. What design style(s) do you prefer?
- e.g. modern, beachy, contemporary, traditional, eclectic, bohemian, other

14. What design style(s) do you absolutely dislike?
- e.g. modern, beachy, contemporary, traditional, eclectic, bohemian, other

15. What patterns, if any, do you like?
- e.g. stripes, zigzags, polka dots

16. What patterns, if any, do you dislike?
- e.g. stripes, zigzags, polka dots

17. What words would you use to describe the ideal style of the room?
- e.g. casual, formal, spacious, clean, minimal, sophisticated, lived-in, welcoming, romantic

18. Do you have any inspirational images you can share?
Tip: use a questionnaire tool like Content Snare that lets clients upload their own reference photos

19. How do you want the space to “feel”, or what mood do you want it to create?
- e.g. warm, cosy, airy, bright, lively, glamorous, welcoming

20. What are your preferences for flooring?
- e.g. hardwood, carpet, concrete, tile, marble

21. What are your preferences for artwork?
- e.g abstract, landscape, nature, photographs, architecture

Tip: You can even take these questions a step further and provide your client with images as examples. We love how this interior design client questionnaire shows images of potential patterns on page 6.

Get this complete list of questions in our questionnaire template

When you use Content Snare, you’ll get access to our complete list of interior design questions pre-loaded into a client questionnaire. All you have to do is send it over to your clients!

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Questions that reveal expected working relationship and client fit

Ask these questions to get a feel for who and how you’ll be collaborating with to get the job done. You’ll need to find out who your primary point of contact is and just how involved they want to be. The answers to these questions will also tell you if the client has enough of a budget to be a fit for your design business.

22. Have you worked with a designer before?
- If yes - ask follow up questions on how the experience was: what went well and what didn’t

23. Who makes the decisions on this project?
- Follow up by asking for their direct phone number and email address

24. How involved are you planning to be with this process?
- e.g. very involved, involved, minimally involved  

25. Do you want your design done in phases or all in one go?

26. If in phases, please list the rooms/areas/functionalities you’d like us to work on in order.

Questions on pricing and budget

These questions help you understand your client’s budget, how willing they are to go past it, and what’s most important to them in the project.

27. What is your budget?
- Provide open-ended questions as well as ranges for budget options

28. What is your preferred time frame for having this project complete?

29. What is more important to you, the budget or the result?  

30. Are there any other services you need that I can help you with?

There are a couple of ways you can go about this

A. Create online forms like Google Forms, Gravity Forms

Google Forms and Gravity Forms are two online forms tools worth exploring. They can be fairly easy to use but there are a couple of important considerations you should keep in mind.

1. Clients have to finish forms in one go

You always want to make life easy for your clients, but when they use forms they have to submit their information all in one go. If they need to exit out of the form for any reason, they’ll have to re-do all their work again when they come back to it. No fun! If people have to deal with inconveniences like this it will only mean there will be delays in getting content back from them.

2. You still need to use email regularly  

When you use online forms, you’ll still need to do the manual work of sharing it with a client over email, reminding them to complete it, and sending follow up emails if their answers are unclear. This can be a huge time suck.

B. Use a purpose-built tool like Content Snare

Another way to go is to use a tool like Content Snare that avoids these headaches. Here’s why this option is a better choice:

1. Clients can fill out their questionnaire in their own time

When your client gets their questionnaire through Content Snare, they can answer as much of it as they want to, and come back to it later. Easy peasy. With an auto-save feature built into the forms, all information is saved and your clients can complete the form over multiple sessions, picking up where they left off last.

2. You don’t need to use email separately
Content Snare cuts out the need for you to send email reminders. You can choose how often you want the platform to send your clients reminders then sit back and let it do the work for you. Content Snare will remind your clients to complete the questionnaire till all the information is complete and received.

How to get your client to complete your questionnaire

So you definitely don’t want to be spending time putting your questionnaire together just so your clients don’t complete it. Here are a few tips for making sure they fill out and return your questionnaire:

1. Set your expectations early on

Any working relationship is a two-way street. When you have your discovery call or initial consultation with your client, let them know what it is that you expect from them too. Give them a heads up that they’ll need to complete your questionnaire before your designers can make any informed decisions or moves on your project.

2. Follow up or use a tool that does this for you

As much as you let your clients know what you need from them, you may still have to follow up to get the questionnaire back from them in time. You can do this manually over email and over the phone, or spare yourself the time when you use a tool like Content Snare that sends out email reminders for you till the whole questionnaire is complete.

We hope this post gave you some helpful inspiration for what questions to include in your interior design questionnaire.

Did we miss any great questions? Let us know in the comments!

Create your questionnaire

When you build your client questionnaire with Content Snare, you’ll make life easy for your clients and receive the information you need much faster. Get ready to wrap up your design projects sooner than you have before.

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