Run Better Discovery Calls with This Simple Prompt
A Proven Process to Ask Smarter Questions, Handle Objections, and Use Data to Qualify Faster
One of the interesting things about doing research on an account and crafting a POV is that when it comes time to talk to a prospect, you come up with MUCH better, and higher QUALITY questions.
The obvious benefit: you qualify better.
Far easier to build rapport and credibility by just coming prepared, having a unique POV, and showing the prospect you understand their world.
Another way to build on the quality of your questions?
Prompting before your discovery call.
Credit: Foothold: Break into Tech Jobs, by Trevor Abroad
Today we’re going to cover just that. We’ll take a deep dive into:
Prompting to Identify Questions to Help You Understand Current to Future State
Using Company Data to Surface Past insights
Prepare for Objections
Prompting to Identify Questions to Help You Understand Current to Future State
Here’s a prompt that I’ve used (and you can too), to help give you ideas on how to incorporate:
account research and crafting your POV (step by step on account POV in link)
using company data to surface any past insights
prepare for objections
I’ve written before that wording is everything. The quality of the answers you receive are a direct result of the quality of questions you ask.
With this prompt, you can get 3 - 4 examples of questions that you’d be able to use and refine based on:
persona & context of account
your own personal knowledge
key insights you’d like to obtain to qualify the potential of the opportunity (or not).
Here’s an example of how I used the prompt above for an account that I was prepping for. Sharing this you can get a feel for the outputs:
Worth noting, you *don’t* have to use all these.
This isn’t a silver bullet - it’s just a way for you to come prepared and it’s up to you how to refine based on what you know.
Using Company Data to Surface Past insights
I was able to use Gong and quickly surface a summary of past conversations related to closed lost deals in the past and get a sense of:
challenges or pain points that were shared previously
business goals that were trying to be achieved by prospect
You can navigate to this feature by simply going to “home” and in the top right corner just input (account name).
From there you’ll see the “Ask Anything” button.
You can either ask your own questions or have suggested questions to surface the insights that you’re looking for.
You can even toggle to specific deal cycles or the most recent ones to help you get the most up to date info.
Again, worth noting that this is just one example. You can use other data sets (ie CRM or other data stores) and prompt in order to find the info that you need.
Prepare for Objections
The most underrated aspect of coming prepared isn’t just being ready to ask the questions - but being ready to handle potential objections that may surface based on all the research you’ve done.
Now, some of these are kind of … “cheesy”.
“If I could show you a way …”: Yea, don’t use that.
The takeaway is that you’re armed with ways to objection handle by firing back with questions that will most likely help frame where or if you can help.
Again, you don’t have to use these word for word or even use them at all.
It’s just a great way to prepare, get you in the mindset of what to expect, and how to handle if/when you hear it.
Remember, it’s all about the prompting:
Credit: Kyle Decentral
It might not be perfect at first, but you can keep refining to what works based on the context that you see in your day to day.
Hopefully the boilerplate prompts we covered today help in upcoming discovery calls. Make it yours if it’s not matching up to the context you see in a day to day basis.
If you have any questions on this topic or thoughts, shoot a DM or email to andrew@hackingsales.xyz.
As always, thanks for reading and see you all next week.
-Andrew K
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