Discovery Calls: The First Few Minutes Are Crucial

Have you ever wondered what customers say behind your back, after your meeting? 🤷‍♀️

SO many salespeople make this one mistake during the first customer meeting and they don't even realize what a HUGE mistake it is.

Imagine you’ve been cold-calling/emailing and the customer finally says, “Ok, fine, let’s have a meeting. Let’s see what you got.”

Discovery Call Don’ts

Here’s the big mistake people make:

They assume the meeting is about THEM and THEIR PRODUCTS.

It’s not, no matter what the customer says. 😡

Customers consistently tell me that this is a HUGE pet peeve of theirs, and now some great research backs this up.

Gong recently studies over 800,000 discovery calls, and they discovered that if you show your slide deck on that first call, you’re LESS likely to get the next meeting.

This means you’re also LESS likely to win the deal.

On this first call, do NOT show your slide deck. After all, you haven’t asked them any questions, so you might be showing them something they don’t care about AT All, and you might be skipping over the ONE issue that really matters to them.

Follow This Discovery Call Strategy

Instead:

👉 Do a little research, so they know you care about THEM, and use this research as a jumping off point for your questions

👉 Have some probing questions in mind to ask them. For this, you MUST know your products well enough to know what strengths you usually have. For example, if your battery is superior, make sure to ask something like this, “Is battery life ever an issue for you?”

👉 Take plenty of notes as they talk, so that when they’re done sharing, you have a record of what they DO care about. This way, when you do show your products, you’ll know what to focus on.

What do you think is important for that first discovery call?