Generate 10 Strong Discovery Questions for a Paid Media Prospect

You are a discovery-call coach for digital marketing agency sellers who close paid media retainers between $5k and $50k/month.
Agency offer: [AGENCY_OFFER] | Prospect role: [PROSPECT_ROLE] in [PROSPECT_INDUSTRY] | Current channels and spend: [CHANNELS_AND_SPEND] | Hypothesis: [PAIN_HYPOTHESIS]
Generate 10 strong discovery questions for the upcoming paid media discovery call. Each question must reveal a MEDDIC fact (Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain, Champion) OR uncover a channel-specific gap (attribution, creative volume, audience saturation, landing pages, in-housing).

- Open-ended only. No yes/no. No leading questions.
- No generic 'what are your goals' or 'tell me about your business'.
- Reference paid media specifics (CAC, ROAS, blended vs platform-reported, MER, creative refresh cadence, Meta vs Google attribution).
- Order matters: pain and metrics first (Q1-4), impact and economic buyer (Q5-7), decision process and competition (Q8-10).
- Match the seniority of [PROSPECT_ROLE]. A CMO gets strategic; a growth manager gets tactical.

Numbered list 1-10. Beneath each question include:
- Why ask this: (1 sentence, which MEDDIC fact or gap it surfaces)
- Listen for: (2-3 short phrases that signal real pain vs noise)

• [AGENCY_OFFER] — Your paid media service (e.g., 'full-funnel Meta + Google management with weekly creative testing')
• [PROSPECT_ROLE] — Title of the person on the call (e.g., 'VP Marketing', 'Head of Growth', 'Founder')
• [PROSPECT_INDUSTRY] — Their industry or vertical (e.g., 'DTC supplements', 'B2B SaaS HR tech')
• [CHANNELS_AND_SPEND] — Channels they run and rough monthly spend (e.g., 'Meta $40k/mo, Google $25k/mo, no TikTok')
• [PAIN_HYPOTHESIS] — Your best guess at why they took the call (e.g., 'CAC up 40% YoY, agency not testing enough creative')

[AGENCY_OFFER]: full-funnel Meta + Google management with in-house creative team
[PROSPECT_ROLE]: VP Marketing
[PROSPECT_INDUSTRY]: DTC skincare, $12M revenue
[CHANNELS_AND_SPEND]: Meta $60k/mo, Google $20k/mo, just starting TikTok
[PAIN_HYPOTHESIS]: Meta CAC has climbed 50% since iOS 14, current agency ships 4 creatives/month

1. Walk me through how you measure paid performance today — what's your blended vs platform-reported MER look like over the last 90 days?
   Why ask this: Surfaces Metrics and exposes attribution maturity.
   Listen for: 'we just use platform numbers,' 'no idea what blended is,' 'we use Triple Whale.'

2. When CAC climbed 50%, what was the first lever you pulled — and what happened?
   Why ask this: Identifies Pain and validates hypothesis.
   Listen for: 'cut budget,' 'changed agencies,' 'tried new creative.'

3. How many net-new creative concepts is your current agency shipping into Meta per month?
   Why ask this: Decision criteria — creative velocity is the #1 lever post-iOS.
   Listen for: anything under 8/month, 'we send them assets,' 'they reuse.'

4. Who owns the TikTok decision — and what does 'working' look like in 90 days?
   Why ask this: Surfaces Decision process and success metric.
   Listen for: 'me and the CMO,' 'depends on ROAS,' 'we need to learn.'

[questions 5-10 continue: economic buyer, last vendor change reason, decision timeline, other agencies in eval, internal team involvement, what would kill the deal]

• Run this prompt the morning of the call with fresh hypothesis — the questions sharpen when [PAIN_HYPOTHESIS] is specific.
• Cut to 5-6 questions for a 30-min call. Use the 'Listen for' lines as your own listening cues, not a script.
• If they answer Q1 with 'we just look at platform ROAS,' you've already qualified a creative + measurement gap — skip ahead.