A first impression can make or break a deal, making a good one is essential. Many companies use discovery calls as their first point of contact for a lead, with the main focus of the call trying to identify how a customer’s needs and the product or service can fit together. In this article, we will look at why a discovery call is important, and how to make sure that your discovery call is successful.
A sales discovery call is the first conversation that a sales representative has with a prospect once a lead has been generated. This call is done so the sales representative can talk to the prospect about the product or service, and how it can help the prospect’s challenges, needs or requirements. It is the ideal method of contact for a sales representative to ask a prospect questions, build a rapport with them, and build trust.
Discovery calls are very important for a business as it is the first point of contact a business will have with a client, meaning depending on how the call goes will have a big effect on the customer’s first impressions of your business. It is not enough to just have a solution for a customer’s problem, a discovery call will help you build trust and a rapport with your customer to make it much more likely they chose to move forward with your business to solve their problem.
Multiple steps must be taken to ensure that your business has a successful discovery call with your customer. This section will look at the different ways to make sure you have a successful discovery.
The length of discovery calls can vary depending on the business and the product or service being offered to the customer. Typically, a discovery call should be above 15 minutes but under one hour to give a client the most insightful call possible, without losing their attention. Mindtickle has shared that through analysis of discovery calls they found that the average time of the calls that led to deals won was between 30-40 minutes long.
When you have a call scheduled, the first step you must take to ensure that the call is successful is to prepare carefully with research on the client. By researching the client, you will be able to ask the right questions to the customer to gain their interest in your product and build rapport. With good research on your prospect, you can find out information on the client such as the industry they operate in, their job title and their budget. By knowing these things, you will be able to give a personalised service to the customer to build more trust with them. The best methods to find out more about your client are:
Now that you have an idea of who your prospect is and have a rough estimate of how long the call will be, the discovery call is ready to take place. The first thing you want to do when the call begins is create a positive atmosphere. The beginning of the call can set the tone for the rest of the sales journey for the customer, so it is important they feel comfortable and enthusiastic. When the call begins, show excitement to potentially be working together with the prospect to create a friendly optimistic rapport with the customer. This first impression the customer gets of you can be very significant in their decision to move along with the sale.
With the knowledge you have gained about the customer’s background through research, you must make sure that you ask the right questions to the customer. These questions should be focused on the challenge your customer has and the context of their situation. These questions should make your customer think about how their problem is negatively affecting them and their business’s goals, creating more urgency for this problem to be solved.
These questions could include:
Mindtickle highlights that winning sales representatives usually ask between 12-15 questions to the client.
Once you have obtained enough information on the prospect’s situation and have created urgency for this problem to be solved, you must now lay out a clear vision of how these challenges will be overcome through the product or service that you are offering. You must pinpoint the main problems your client is experiencing and explain how your product will be able to help them. By contextualising their issues and how your product will overcome their problem, you greatly increase the chances of the prospect being converted.
Whether you schedule another call, demo, or just a method to contact them, make sure you let them know when you will be in touch again. It is important that the customer always feels like they are moving towards getting their problem solved and things aren’t stalling. This will keep the sales process moving, completing a successful discovery call.
CRM software can help your discovery call process as it will bring your business some unique benefits that can be used to improve your discovery calls.
Once a lead is generated, CRM software can help you better understand your leads through information on the channel they were generated from, and their name or business. This will help sales representatives obtain useful research on leads to give their customers a more personalised service during the discovery call.
With sales automation CRM software, you can organise your leads into buckets and filter out leads that may not be relevant. As a result, this will help your sales team identify the leads that are relevant to your product or service before a discovery call is made, helping improve your team’s organisation with the discovery calls they make.
TEB is a sales automation CRM software that can completely transform your sales funnel and help you enhance your discovery calls. Through TEBs unique features, you can plan out your discovery calls with data about clients, increasing the likelihood that a lead will be won. TEB achieves this through its standout features such as:
If you would like to learn more about TEB, and discover exactly how its unique features can transform your business, request a call with us here.
