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5 Questions That Will Help
You Win More Business

Read on my website​

Read time: 4 minutes
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I recently shared a Tweet showing people how to get started as a Solopreneur.

One of the major steps (step 8) was about running a “discovery call” and asking five levels of “discovery questions”.

Justin Welsh @thejustinwelsh How to get started as a solopreneur: (even if you have less than 5k followers) 1. Take the thing you do at work. 2. Build a simple landing page. 3. Write copy that describes that thing. 4. Add a button to "book" a discovery call. 5. Write content about it for 90 days. 6. Answer… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1730936365351596530 8:6 AM • Dec 2, 2023 218 Retweets 1847 Likes Read 143 replies

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I got lots of questions about this.

• What’s a discovery call?
• Why do you ask those questions?
• How do you use those questions to sell?

So today I’ll show you what the 5 questions are, and why they’re so powerful.

By mastering these questions, the follow-ups, and the flow, you are going to sell a lot more of your product or service.

Let’s dive in:

What’s a Discovery Call?

A discovery call is a common practice in the sales world.

It’s a call (or meeting) where you learn about the challenges your prospect is facing, in order to position your product or service as the best solution.

If you jump on a Zoom and just start pitching, you’re almost never going to close the deal. I’ve seen this first-hand where companies just start prattling on about all of their products and features, having no clue what’s important to me. That sucks.

As the seller, you need to match your features and benefits to the specific challenges your prospects face.

My approach allows me to position my services as the right choice (if they are). And it’s one of the most natural ways to run discovery. No cringey selling.

My approach is called “The 5 Levels of Pain, Priority, and Timing”.

Here’s how it works:

Level 1: Surface Pain

Surface pain manifests as a vague, generic description of a problem. If you’ve talked to your prospects, you’ve probably heard Surface Pain. It’s usually the first thing they mention.

Here’s an example:

Prospect: “You know Justin, my landing page isn’t performing well.”

That’s surface level stuff. It means (almost) nothing. I need to peel back the onion. So, I follow up with a few questions.

Justin: “What do you mean, isn’t performing well? Is it a new page that just isn’t meeting expectations? Or an older page and suddenly conversions are going down? Or is it something else entirely?”

Prospect: “It’s an old page, and conversions were steady at 4% for a few years. But over the last 6 months, they’ve fallen to 2.5%.”

Now we’ve got some valuable information.

Level 2: Historical Pain

Once we have a clear understanding of what the problem is, we can start to ask questions about what the prospect has tried historically to fix the problem.

Justin: “What have you done, so far, to try and fix this?”

Prospect: “Well I’m not really an expert at it, but I’ve changed some headers, some copy, and some of the CTAs. I’ve also moved around some of the pictures to try and make it less busy.”

Justin: “Understood. How long are you spending on that stuff?”

Prospect: “Been doing that for the last month, maybe 15 minutes a day.”

Justin: “And how has that worked so far?”

Prospect: “It hasn’t. Can’t seem to make an impact. A few things have made it worse, but none have made it better.”

Now it sounds like this prospect has two problems.

He’s losing money and he’s wasting time (which costs money). Yikes.

Level 3: Financial Pain

With these new insights, we’re starting to get a more well-rounded picture of my prospect’s problem. And now it’s imperative to tie a number — real dollars and cents — to the problem.

Here’s how I’d do that:

Justin: “Got it. And do you know how many visitors per month that page gets?”

Prospect: “About 1,000.”

Justin: “And what’s the average price for your product?”

Prospect: “$200”

Justin: “Okay. Sounds like the drop from 4% to 2.5% is costing you about $3,000 a month, based on my math. So basically, a $36k yearly loss. Is that what you’re seeing on your books?”

Prospect: “Yeah. It’s been about $2,800 a month. I hadn’t considered the yearly impact. Wow.”

Now this is a key moment. The prospect now understands what it costs to NOT solve this problem. And while the cost may be high, it would be silly to assume that this is our prospect’s top priority to fix. He may have another $75k project we’re totally unaware of that takes top priority.

Now I want to learn more.

Level 4: Priority

Now it’s your job to understand if fixing this problem is the #1 priority for the prospect. I position this question softly.

Justin: “I realize I’m just here to talk about the landing page. But there might be other stuff going on in your business too. So, finding a solution for this landing page — how high of a priority is this for you?”

Prospect: “It’s my top priority.”

Okay — terrific. We’re in position #1.

Now it’s time to learn our prospects timeline.

You might think he’s ready to sign on the dotted line, but what if he’s about to head out on vacation for a month? Or maybe he MUST have this solved in a week, but it will take you 45 days? That’s not a good fit.

So we have to learn more.

Level 5: Timing

My last question helps me understand the timing. When does our prospect need his landing page fixed by?

So I ask a simple question, and I already know the potential answers:

Justin: “And in an ideal world, when do you need this page fixed by?”

There are only 3 potential answers, and here’s how I hold the prospect accountable to each one:

Prospect:

• I need this fixed ASAP: “I bet! And realistically, is there anything that might come up that would stop this from being top priority?”
• A specific date in the future: “Okay. That’s pretty specific. Can I ask why having this fixed by that date is critical?”
• Non-specific: “Okay, so it sounds like there’s no immediate urgency to getting this fixed. Is that right?”

What To Do Next

With all this information, you can build a simple business case along with your proposal:

• Send an email and recap everything you heard and learned above.
• Tell the prospect how your solution works, and how you’ll approach the problem.
• Now let them know what it costs. If you can fix his landing page for $10K, and that gives him months of time back and keeps him from losing $36K annually, that’s a pretty great deal. Spell that out.
• Lastly, tell him long it will take. If he wants it finished in the next 45 days and it takes you 35 days, you’ll need to have a contract in place in the next 10 days to meet that deadline.

This is how great entrepreneurs sell their products and services.

They don’t pitch features. And they don’t spend too much time talking, pitching, or demonstrating their product.

They build a smart business case through intelligent discovery.

I hope you found this short sales lesson helpful.

I’ll see you next week.

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