The first call with a new buyer decides most of what happens next. If it goes well, you leave with a real problem, a sense of who else is involved and a reason to meet again. If it goes badly, it turns into a demo nobody asked for and a polite "send me some information".
Good discovery is a skill, and it can be planned.
Prepare properly
Spend 20 minutes on research before the call. Look at recent company news, annual reports or funding announcements, the buyer's role and background, and any public signs of the problem you solve. Write down two or three hypotheses about what might be going on. You will test these during the call rather than present them.
Agree the agenda
Open by agreeing how the time will be used. For example: "I'd like to understand what prompted you to take the call and what you're working on. If it looks like we could help, I can show you how. Either way, we can agree at the end whether a next step makes sense." It sets expectations and makes talking about next steps feel normal later.
Ask about the situation, then the problem
Start broad and get more specific. Useful questions:
- What prompted you to look at this now?
- How does this work today, and who is involved?
- What is not working the way you would like?
- What have you tried already?
- What happens if nothing changes over the next year?
Follow up on anything vague. If the buyer says a process is slow, ask how slow, compared with what, and who notices. The detail is where the value is. Gong's analysis of 519,000 recorded discovery calls found that the most successful ones explored three or four business problems in depth and involved 11 to 14 questions, spread across the call rather than front-loaded.
Find the impact
A problem becomes a project when it has a cost. Ask how the issue shows up in the numbers the business cares about, such as revenue, cost, risk or time, and who else feels it. If the buyer cannot describe the impact, the project will struggle to get budget.
Learn how they buy
Before the call ends, get a first view of the decision process:
- Who else would be involved in a decision like this?
- How have you bought similar tools before?
- Is there a date or event this needs to fit around?
- Is budget set aside, or would it need to be found?
You do not need complete answers on the first call. You need enough to know whether the opportunity is real and who to meet next. Frameworks such as MEDDPICC give these questions a structure: the economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process and paper process all start here, and the paper process is where procurement comes in.
Let them do most of the talking
Aim for the buyer to speak for most of the call. If you find yourself explaining the product in detail, pause and ask a question instead. Save the demo for a later meeting, built around what you learned. In the same Gong research, the strongest calls had frequent back-and-forth between buyer and seller, closer to a conversation than a presentation.
End with a clear next step
Summarise what you heard in two or three sentences and check you have it right. Then propose a specific next step with a date, such as a tailored session with the people who would use the product or a call with the budget holder. Send the invitation before you hang up.
Write it down
Record your notes the same day: the problem in the buyer's words, the impact, the people involved and the agreed next step. These notes become the starting point for the mutual success plan and make every later conversation easier.