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.

Effective sales discovery calls play a crucial role in revenue growth by converting prospects into loyal customers.

Converting customers through sales discovery calls can significantly improve brand loyalty and customer retention rates. These calls are also a key part of a broader lead generation strategy, helping to attract and nurture potential clients throughout the sales funnel.

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 focusing on the right tactics during discovery calls increases the likelihood of a successful outcome for both your business and your client, and how to avoid common pitfalls that send sales discovery calls south.

What is a sales discovery call?

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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. Having clear talking points helps guide the conversation and ensures all important topics are addressed.

If you’re using video, you can discuss things like the customer’s skin type and features, highlight relevant product features that address the prospect's needs, 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. Discussing the key benefits of your offering during the discovery call helps the prospect understand the value you provide. 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.

What's the secret to successful discovery calls?

Picking up the phone to potential clients can be nerve-wracking. Preparation is everything. Before conducting discovery calls, it's crucial to ensure your sales and marketing teams are on the same page to share current information and expectations. Here’s what you need to know to ensure your calls result in more hooks and less hang-ups.

Refining your sales strategy based on the outcomes of your discovery calls can lead to better targeting and improved sales results.

Book appointments

When scouting for potential clients, use a sales prospecting tool to identify promising prospects that are most likely to convert. Booking appointments is a crucial step in generating leads, as it supports your overall lead generation efforts by moving prospects further down the funnel. 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 calls are a classic outbound method to generate leads, scheduled discovery calls are often more effective. Cold calls involve reaching out directly to potential customers, but scheduling appointments allows for better preparation and typically leads to higher conversion rates.

For B2B sales, scheduling discovery calls looks professional. When booking B2B discovery calls, it's important to target decision makers within the company to maximize your chances of generating high-quality leads. 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. Optimizing your scheduling process is essential for generating leads more efficiently and building a comprehensive system for generating leads across multiple channels.

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. Including key points in your discovery call template ensures that important topics are always covered during the conversation.

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. As part of your script, prepare a concise sales pitch to clearly communicate your value proposition at the right moment in the call.

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.

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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. Utilize tools like CRM systems and data analytics to prepare for discovery calls, ensuring your team is equipped with relevant information.

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, greatly influencing customer engagement. 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. Having a few people specialize in different stages of the sales process can also improve efficiency and ensure each step is handled by those best suited for the task.

Ensure they are supported with all of the right resources and tools to do the job well. Providing valuable resources, such as case studies, hard data, and industry trends, can help sales reps build credibility and uncover unrecognized business needs. 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. A good leadership from a sales director is essential to drive continuous improvement in sales rep performance.

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. Tracking prospects as they move through the sales pipeline helps you identify where bottlenecks occur and optimize each stage for better results. 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

• Using lead scoring to prioritize follow-up actions and focus on the most promising leads

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.

When analyzing your data, pay close attention to the performance of individual leads to identify trends and areas for improvement. Reviewing data from the past few months can help you spot recent changes in conversion rates, sales effectiveness or changes in prospect in

To maximize conversion rates, focus your efforts on qualified leads who have demonstrated strong intent or meet your predefined criteria.

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. Effective follow-up can also lay the groundwork for a successful partnership by building trust and rapport with your prospect.

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

Prioritizing follow-up with qualified leads is essential to improve conversion rates and ensure your efforts are focused on prospects most likely to become customers.

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. Failing to listen to your prospects can lead to missed opportunities, as you might overlook their true needs or concerns.

Talking over the prospect

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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. The goal is to get the prospect talking so you can uncover their needs and challenges. 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.

Use sales discovery calls to bring in high-quality leads

Sales discovery calls are a valuable tool in your sales arsenal. They are a key step in the sales journey, helping you uncover the prospect's pain points and business challenges. 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. Sharing relevant insights and demonstrating a comprehensive understanding of the prospect's business and prospect's industry are essential for building trust and credibility.

A great discovery call involves genuinely interested sales reps who take the time to identify pain points, understand the prospect's challenges, and offer potential solutions tailored to their needs.

Successful sales calls and sales conversations are the result of focused sales efforts and best practices that prioritize the prospect's needs and foster meaningful engagement.

By following the tips we’ve provided here, you can make successful calls that convert every time, leading to successful sales and long-term client relationships. Time to get dialing!