Free STAOS Tool
Discovery Call Checklist & Question Generator
A discovery call should leave you with: a real pain, what it's costing, who decides, when, and a yes-or-no next step. Pick the questions to ask, get a tailored checklist + coverage score, then copy it into your CRM.
Deals you "lose" usually had a discovery problem, not a closing problem. The fix is the same six pieces every time. STAOS coaches teams to run them in 30 minutes without sounding like an interrogation.
Built by STAOS — sales coaching & fractional sales management for agencies.
01 How it works
Pick the questions, get the checklist.
A discovery call should end with five things established: a real pain, what it costs, who decides, when, and a yes-or-no next step. Most calls end with enthusiasm instead, which is why the deal goes dark two weeks later.
Prospect type or industry and a one-line description of what you sell. Both are used to tailor the wording of the questions, so the checklist reads like something you would actually say rather than a template.
Work down the list and select the ones that fit this call. The coverage score updates as you go, showing which of the six areas — context, pain, impact, decision, timing, next step — you have actually covered and which you have skipped.
You get a tailored checklist with a coverage score out of 100. Copy the checklist or just the questions and paste them into the opportunity record before the call, so the notes have somewhere to land.
02 Questions
Running discovery that holds up later.
Six things: what is happening now, what specifically hurts, what it costs them in money or time, who signs, when it needs to be solved, and what happens next. Miss any one and the deal has a hole in it that shows up weeks later as silence.
How much of those six areas your selected questions actually reach. A low score is not a verdict on the questions — they may be good ones — it just means they cluster in one or two areas. Most agency discovery over-indexes on pain and skips impact and decision process entirely.
Thirty minutes is enough with structure, and structure is what stops it becoming an interrogation. The failure mode is a rep working down a list without reacting to answers. Ask, listen, follow the thread, then return to the frame — the checklist is there to make sure nothing is missed, not to set the running order.
What it costs them. Reps establish the pain and then move straight to the solution, which leaves the buyer with a problem they have not priced. If the cost of doing nothing is never quantified, your proposal is compared against zero, and zero usually wins.
Ask about the cost of the problem first, then about what they have solved things like this for before. Leading with "what's your budget" invites a defensive number that anchors the rest of the conversation downward. Establish value, then talk price — Gong's data shows discussing price on the first call actually lifts win rate by around 10 points when it comes after value, not before.
Very rarely. Deals that die at the proposal stage nearly always had a discovery problem — an unquantified pain, an unidentified decision-maker, or no real timeline. By the time it looks like a closing failure, the missing piece is months old. That is why we start every engagement here.
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