How to Run a B2B Discovery Call #178
A lot of founders think a discovery call is the point where the potential client gets to discover more about their business.
What you do.
How your product works.
Why you're different.
Your experience.
Your features.
Your methodology.
This approach to discovery is completely backwards.
A discovery call is primarily your opportunity to discover the buyer.
Their business.
Their current situation.
What isn't working.
Why it isn't working.
What that is doing to the business.
Where they want to get to.
And whether there is actually a problem worth solving.
The product comes later.
Because if you don't understand the problem properly, there is very little point explaining the solution.
The biggest discovery call mistake: pitching too early
You've probably experienced this.
A potential client joins the call and says:
“Tell me a little more about what you do.”
And off you go.
Ten minutes later you're halfway through the product, explaining features, capabilities, integrations and how brilliant everything is.
The buyer is listening politely.
But you still know almost nothing about them.
This is what I call the product pitch trap.
The problem isn't that you should never explain what you do.
Of course you should.
The problem is doing it before you understand what's relevant.
A better response is something like:
“Happy to. It would be useful if I first understood what's happening on your side so I can keep anything I share relevant. What prompted you to look at this in the first place?”
Now the spotlight moves back onto them.
That's where it should be.
Discovery isn't about asking lots of questions
There's another trap.
Founders learn they shouldn't pitch, so they download a list of 20, 30 or 50 “great discovery questions”.
Then the meeting becomes an interview.
Question.
Answer.
Write something down.
Next question.
That's not necessarily good discovery either.
You can ask a lot of questions and still understand very little.
The objective isn't to complete a questionnaire.
It's to understand the buyer's business deeply enough to diagnose what is happening.
When I'm thinking about discovery, I'm looking for five things:
Facts → Problems → Impact → Root Causes → Future State
That's the foundation of what I call Business Diagnosis.
Let's go through it.
1. Understand the buyer's current reality
Before you can talk intelligently about improving something, you need to understand how it works today.
What actually happens?
Who is involved?
Which systems are used?
Where are the handovers?
How frequently does the problem occur?
How long does the process take?
What's already been tried?
This is where process questions become incredibly useful.
Imagine you're selling software to a logistics company.
They tell you:
“Our invoicing takes too long.”
You could immediately start explaining how your software automates invoicing.
Or you could ask:
“Can you walk me through what happens from the moment a delivery is completed until the customer receives the invoice?”
Now you might discover drivers sending proof-of-delivery documents through WhatsApp.
A transport coordinator updating a spreadsheet.
Billing manually checking the original quotation.
Operations approving additional charges by email.
Someone chasing missing information.
A supervisor checking everything again.
Suddenly, “invoicing takes too long” has become something you can actually understand.
That's discovery.
2. Let the problems reveal themselves
Once you understand the process, problems normally start appearing on their own.
Manual work.
Repeated work.
Missing information.
Poor visibility.
Unclear responsibilities.
Errors.
Delays.
Bottlenecks.
Workarounds.
Reliance on one particular employee who seems to know everything.
You don't have to tell the buyer:
“Your process is broken.”
Ask enough intelligent questions and let them describe what is happening themselves.
That's far more powerful.
One thing I pay particular attention to is vague language.
“We need more leads.”
“Our conversion isn't good enough.”
“The process is too slow.”
“We need better productivity.”
Those statements sound meaningful, but they aren't useful yet.
If someone says:
“We're not growing fast enough.”
I'll want to know:
“What does fast enough mean?”
Maybe they're growing at 22% and need to reach 25%.
Now we have a defined gap.
And once you have a defined gap, you can start understanding what it actually means commercially.
If you want to develop this questioning skill further, this connects closely with the existing Business 737 article How to Ask Questions.
3. Find the business impact
This is where discovery starts becoming commercially meaningful.
A problem is not automatically important simply because it exists.
The question is:
What is that problem doing to the business?
Maybe it's costing money.
Reducing revenue.
Destroying margin.
Wasting employee time.
Slowing cash collection.
Creating risk.
Losing customers.
Reducing capacity.
Delaying projects.
Preventing growth.
This distinction is particularly important when you're selling something technical.
Your buyer may have a technical problem.
But businesses rarely invest significant money simply because something is technically annoying.
Imagine a healthcare organisation where consultants have to enter the same information into three different systems.
The technical problem is obvious.
The systems don't integrate.
But keep digging.
Suppose each consultant loses 45 minutes every day duplicating information.
There are 40 consultants.
That's 30 hours of specialist clinical capacity being consumed every day.
Now we're having a completely different conversation.
The technical issue is duplicated data entry.
The business problem is expensive specialist capacity being consumed by administration while patients wait to be seen.
That's where value starts becoming visible.
4. Quantify what the problem is costing
Wherever reasonably possible, put numbers against the impact.
I don't mean manufacturing some enormous ROI figure to make your offer look cheap.
I mean helping the buyer understand the genuine commercial consequences of their current situation.
Let's use a simple founder-led sales example.
A business currently closes one out of every ten qualified discovery calls.
They typically have ten qualified opportunities each month.
Each new client is worth £10,000.
Suppose the desired future state is three wins from ten rather than one.
That's two additional clients.
Potentially £20,000 of additional revenue each month.
£240,000 across a year.
Now the conversation isn't:
“Would you like some sales training?”
It's:
“What is preventing you from converting more of the opportunities you're already generating, and what would fixing that be worth?”
Very different conversation.
Whenever possible, let the buyer give you the figures.
Their opportunity volume.
Their conversion rate.
Their labour costs.
Their average client value.
Their lost customers.
Their processing time.
Their numbers build the business case.
5. Diagnose the root cause
Finding a problem still isn't enough.
You need to understand why it exists.
Let's say a company has a high level of invoice disputes.
The easy conclusion might be:
“The billing team is making too many mistakes.”
But why?
Perhaps billing receives incomplete shipment information.
Why?
Drivers submit information differently.
Operations sometimes changes job information after the quote is approved.
How does billing know something changed?
They don't, unless somebody remembers to tell them.
Now we're somewhere useful.
The real root cause may not be incompetent billing employees at all.
It might be a fragmented process with no consistent way of transferring operational changes into the invoicing system.
That's a very different diagnosis.
And this is where your expertise matters.
Credibility doesn't come from repeatedly telling someone you're an expert.
It comes from understanding their world well enough to identify what is really happening.
6. Understand where they want to go
Discovery isn't only about problems.
You also need to understand the buyer's desired future state.
What does good look like?
Again, avoid vague outcomes.
“We want to be more efficient.”
How much more efficient?
“We want better conversion.”
From what to what?
“We want to grow faster.”
How fast?
“We want invoices going out quicker.”
How quickly?
Move from aspiration to objective.
Instead of:
“We need better productivity.”
You might eventually establish:
“We need to increase output by 25% without adding another shift.”
That's a future state.
Then go one step deeper.
Ask:
Why does that matter?
Or one of my favourite questions:
“Tell me about what's driving this change.”
Perhaps that 25% increase will allow the company to take on a major new contract.
Perhaps reaching a growth target matters because the founder wants to raise investment.
Perhaps improving profitability puts the owners in a position to sell the business in three years.
Perhaps recovering capacity means they don't need to recruit another six people.
The target matters.
But the reason behind the target is often where the real motivation sits.
Think of discovery as building a bridge
I often think about this visually.
Your buyer is standing on one side of a river.
That's their current state.
On the other side is where they want to be.
Their future state.
Your job during discovery is to understand the distance between the two.
How wide is the river?
How difficult is it to cross?
What happens if they stay where they are?
How much better is the other side?
The bigger and more commercially significant that legitimate gap is, the more valuable change becomes.
Your product or service is simply the bridge.
That's why leading with the bridge makes no sense.
First understand where they are and where they need to get to.
The best discovery calls make the buyer think
One of the most important changes you can make is to stop asking questions purely because you want answers.
Ask questions that create reflection.
If a founder tells you:
“We should be winning more of these deals.”
Don't automatically jump to your next prepared question.
Ask:
“What makes them deals you believe you should be winning?”
Now they have to think.
They may realise something they haven't properly defined before.
That's valuable.
The best discovery conversations don't simply give you more information.
They give the buyer more clarity about their own business.
This is also why active listening matters so much.
Pause.
Mirror important phrases.
Paraphrase.
Summarise.
Validate what you've heard.
“Let me make sure I've understood this properly…”
“So the real issue isn't X. It's Y. Have I got that right?”
You want the buyer thinking:
Yes. That's exactly what's happening.
Don't rush to solve everything
One warning.
Business Diagnosis doesn't mean giving away an entire consulting engagement during the discovery call.
Your objective is to diagnose enough of the situation to establish:
Is there a meaningful problem?
What impact is it having?
What's causing it?
What does the buyer want instead?
Does resolving it matter enough to justify change?
And are you genuinely capable of helping?
You don't need to implement the solution there and then.
Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is identify the problem accurately and stop.
A properly qualified opportunity looks different
After good discovery, qualification becomes much easier.
I want to know four things:
Does this buyer have a problem we can genuinely help solve?
Do they recognise that the problem exists?
Is the problem important enough that they actually want to fix it?
Are they prepared to make the changes required to fix it?
If the answer is no, that's useful.
Not every discovery call should become a sale.
Sometimes the problem isn't big enough.
Sometimes your solution doesn't address the real root cause.
Sometimes there are more important priorities.
Walking away from those deals is part of good selling.
Discovery is often where the deal is really won
Founders often focus on the end of the sales process.
The proposal.
The negotiation.
The close.
But many of the problems that appear at the end actually began much earlier.
The buyer ghosts.
Price suddenly becomes the issue.
The demo generates interest but no action.
Another stakeholder appears and questions everything.
The proposal sits unanswered.
Often, the foundation simply wasn't established during discovery.
That's why I believe discovery is one of the most important parts of any founder-led B2B sales process.
Not because it's the place to persuade somebody to buy.
Because it's the place where both of you establish whether there is a commercially meaningful reason for them to change.
Understand their current state.
Diagnose the problems.
Quantify the impact.
Find the root causes.
Define the future state.
Understand why it matters.
Then, and only then, show how you can help.
When that's done properly, you don't need to push nearly as hard.
The buyer has already helped establish the case for change.
And your solution becomes the logical next step.
Book a Call
If you're generating opportunities but too many discovery calls turn into product presentations, vague conversations or deals that later stall, we can look at exactly where the process is breaking down. Find out more how to run a B2B Discovery Call by clicking the link below
