17 Sales Discovery Questions to Close More Deals

17 sales discovery call questions to close more deals

Sales is the lifeblood of any business. Without sales, there is no revenue, and without revenue, there is no business.

As a salesperson, your main job is figuring out if what you're selling is something that the customer needs. The best way to do that is by asking the right sales discovery questions on your calls.

In this article, I’ll show you frameworks for asking discovery questions, examples of real discovery questions you can ask your leads, and the reasons they’re so effective.

Let’s dive in.

Discovery calls: A primer

The most critical thing to know about discovery calls is that they're all about your prospect and their needs.

In most cases, you’ll have sent your prospects a cold email or connected with them using LinkedIn prospecting, or made a personalized cold call. After a short conversation, they’ll book a meeting with you where you can start to learn more about their pain points.

A sales discovery call isn’t a chance for you to pitch your product or service. Remember – people like buying and having someone solve their pain points, but in general, people don’t want to feel like they’re being actively sold to.

When approaching your sales calls, switch your mindset from "How can I sell my product?" to "How can my product help this person?" and you'll be on the right track to close more leads.

Consider sales calls as a filtering process. Good salespeople separate the people who need their product from those who don't. The best salespeople are able to do this without wasting anyone's time – they know that not everyone is a potential customer, and they're okay with that.

You will notice that the sales discovery questions we’re going to look at are all open-ended. That's intentional because the goal of each question is to get your prospect talking. The more they talk, the more information you'll have to work with.

Considering a B2B buyer only spends 17% of the buying process actually talking to you, it’s vital you use that time to learn as much as you can about their pain points and how you can help them solve them.

When you ask 'yes or no' questions, you're putting pressure on the prospect to answer in a certain way. And that often leads to them either:

Naturally, neither of those outcomes is ideal. You want the prospect to open up to you and share what they're really thinking about their pain points, sales objections, and how your product or service might fit in.

In sales lingo, we say that good sales discovery questions "move the needle" because they help you move the needle closer to a sale. By asking the right questions, you can find out whether the prospect is a good fit for your product or not. If they're not, it's best to move on and focus your energy on someone who is more likely to buy from you.

Let's take a look at some examples of discovery questions that'll help you move the needle.

4 frameworks and 17 examples of sales discovery questions

The best sales discovery questions are the ones that help you understand four things:

You can think of the discovery process as a funnel. It starts with general questions about the prospect's business and their needs.

As the conversation progresses, the questions get more specific.

By the end of the call, you should have a clear picture of your potential customer's situation. And you can use that to figure out whether your product is a good fit for them.

A sales discovery call is a journey. It takes the prospect from where they are now to where they want to be. The goal is to find out whether your product can help them get there.

1. Understand the problem the prospect is facing

The first step in any sale is understanding what problem the prospect is trying to solve. Here are some sales discovery questions that'll help you understand the problem they are facing:

  1. What challenges are you currently facing in your business?
  2. How does that make you feel?
  3. Can you walk me through what that looks like?
  4. What impact is that problem having on your business?
  5. Who does this problem affect most at your company?

These types of questions will help you understand not just what the problem is but also how it's impacting the prospect.

2. The size of the problem

Once you understand the problem, it's time to start digging into how big of a problem it is for them. Here are some questions that'll help you understand the size of the problem:

  1. How long have you been dealing with this problem?
  2. How much does it cost you (in time, money, etc.)?
  3. What other areas of your business are being affected by this problem?
  4. How urgently do you need to find a solution?

These questions will give you a better idea of how big of an issue the problem is for the prospect.

3. Can your product or service help solve the problem?

Here is where you ask sales discovery questions to figure out whether your product or service can actually help your prospect. Here are some questions that will help:

  1. How much are you willing to invest in solving this problem?
  2. Do you have the internal resources to implement a solution?
  3. What's the timeline for finding and implementing a solution?

4. The decision-making process

After you've established that there's a problem and that your product can solve it, the next step is to understand the decision-making process.

  1. Who's involved in making this decision?
  2. What is each decision-maker's role?
  3. What are their primary concerns about this decision?
  4. What criteria are they going to use to evaluate solutions?
  5. What's the timeline for making a decision?

Once you have this information, you can start to tailor your pitch.

Ask targeted sales discovery questions to improve sales performance

The best salespeople are always asking questions. They're constantly gathering information and improving their understanding of their prospect's needs.

Asking targeted sales discovery questions is a great way to improve your sales performance. By spending time understanding your prospect's pain points, you can position your product or service as the perfect solution.