Discovery questions: the 20 I actually ask on the phone

Sales discovery questions are the open questions you ask a prospect to understand their situation, what bothers them, what it costs them, who decides and when they plan to act. On a cold call, ask 2 to 4, just enough to qualify and book a meeting. In a meeting, go up to 8 to 12. Below are my 20 B2B discovery question examples, word for word, in five groups: situation, pain, impact, decision, timing.

When I started, I thought a good rep was someone who talked well. I prepared my pitch, recited it, and waited for the prospect to say yes. He never said yes.

What changed the way I call was realising that a prospect buys nothing until they have said their problem out loud themselves. As long as I describe it, it is my problem. When they say it, it becomes theirs.

Discovery questions do three things:

• They qualify. You quickly know whether it is worth going on, and you avoid meetings that lead nowhere.

• They give you the words. The prospect tells you exactly how they talk about their problem. You just reuse them.

• They relax the call. A prospect talking about themselves is no longer on the defensive.

For the full structure of a call (opener, discovery, booking the meeting), see our cold call script.

I phrase them in my own words of the day, but the outline is always the same. They are all open: you cannot answer them with yes or no.

Situation: understand where they are

• 1. "How do you go about [finding new clients] today?"

• 2. "How many people on the team handle that?"

• 3. "What tools are you using for it right now?"

• 4. "What has changed on your side over the last six months?"

No more than two or three here on a cold call. You can guess half of the situation from LinkedIn before you dial.

Pain: find what is stuck

• 5. "What takes up most of your time in [prospecting] today?"

• 6. "If you could change just one thing in the way you do it, what would it be?"

• 7. "What have you already tried to fix that?"

• 8. "Why do you think it didn't work?"

Question 6 is my favourite. It forces the prospect to choose, and what they choose is their real priority.

Impact: measure what it costs

• 9. "Roughly how much time does that take each week?"

• 10. "What happens if nothing changes by the end of the year?"

• 11. "How does it show up in your results?"

• 12. "Who else in the company is affected by this?"

This is the group reps skip the most. Yet a pain with no impact is a "that would be nice" that never turns into a purchase.

Decision: know who signs and how

• 13. "Apart from you, who would be involved in a decision like this?"

• 14. "The last time you picked a tool like this, how did it go?"

• 15. "What would make you say yes to a solution?"

• 16. "What could get in the way internally?"

Number 14 is the most useful of all. The prospect walks you through their buying process without even noticing.

Timing: know when

• 17. "When do you see yourselves tackling this?"

• 18. "What needs to happen before you can move forward?"

• 19. "What would make this urgent for you?"

• 20. "If we meet again, what would you need to see to move forward?"

And when a prospect tells me "call me back in September", I ask number 18. Very often, "September" hides something else.

Discovery on a cold call and discovery in a meeting do not have the same goal. On a cold call you have a few minutes and a prospect who was not expecting you. In a meeting, they blocked 30 minutes for you.

On a cold call, my usual sequence fits in three questions: one on situation (number 1), one on pain (5 or 6), one on timing (17). If the answers are good, I offer the meeting. I keep the rest for the meeting. A prospect you already asked everything on the phone has no reason to see you again.

To track whether your discovery turns into meetings, see cold calling KPIs.

I posted about this on LinkedIn and it is one of the posts reps reacted to the most. Because we have all been there.

The prospect says: "We tried [competitor], it was rubbish." And now you have two options.

Option 1, the wrong one. You pile on. "Yes, we hear that a lot, ours is much better." You just lost. The prospect chose that tool, or their team did. By bashing it, you tell them they chose badly. And you come across as the rep who badmouths others, and nobody trusts that rep.

Option 2, the right one. You stay quiet and open up. In my head it is "keep going, I'm listening". On the phone it sounds like:

• "Really? What happened?"

• "What bothered you the most?"

• "And at the start, what made you choose it?"

• "If you had to pick one again tomorrow, what should it do better?"

With these four questions, the prospect hands you their full list of requirements, for free. What they liked, what let them down, what they expect. You just answer point by point, on your strengths, without ever naming the other tool.

And the third question is the most valuable: what made them choose it in the first place is often what will make them choose next time.

The same principle works for every objection. The more negative the prospect, the more they have to say. Your job is to give them the room.

Asking the question is half the job. The other half is what you do with the answer.

• I count to two after they answer. Often the prospect adds the most important sentence right after a short silence.

• I rephrase with their words. "If I understand correctly, what costs you the most is [their exact words]." If they say "yes, exactly", you are on the right track.

• I dig before moving on. "Meaning?", "Do you have an example?", "Does that happen often?". A good answer deserves a second question.

• I do not write everything down during the call. If I type while they talk, I only half listen. I jot three keywords and get the rest afterwards.

That is where the tool really helps. In Flunter, every call is recorded and transcribed word for word, and an AI summary (topics, requests, objections, next steps) arrives a few seconds after the call and goes to your CRM. I can listen to the prospect 100% instead of playing secretary. And in the evening I reread the transcripts of my best calls to see which questions got people talking.

For managers, whisper coaching lets you listen to a live call and suggest a question to the rep without the prospect hearing it. I don't know a faster way to learn discovery.

• The interrogation. Ten questions in a row without bouncing off anything. The prospect feels like they are filling in a tax form. One question, listen, follow up.

• Closed questions. "Do you have a CRM?" Yes. Now what? Try "How do you keep track of your prospects today?".

• Pitching at the first pain. The prospect says "we waste time" and you pull out your demo. Wait. Ask how much time, and what it costs. Impact is gold.

• Asking and answering for them. "You struggle to reach your prospects, right?" That is no longer a question, it is a suggestion.

• Forgetting the decision. You leave the meeting delighted, and two weeks later you find out the real decision maker never heard of you.

• The same list for everyone. A sales director with 40 people and a solo founder do not have the same problems. Adapt the brackets.

The best way to spot these mistakes is to listen back to your calls. I do it every week, see how to review a cold call session.

There is no secret: you get good at discovery by doing a lot of it. And to do a lot of it, you need to talk to a lot of people.

When I dialled one number after another, I spent a big part of my session listening to rings and voicemail. With a parallel dialer, it is the opposite. Flunter, the most efficient parallel dialer I have used, dials up to 5 numbers at once (3 on the Starter plan) and passes me the first human who answers. Voicemail and switchboards are set aside by an in-house detection engine, tuned continuously on real sales calls. I just talk: up to 5x more conversations, so up to 5x more chances to test my questions.

And since the call is logged in the CRM automatically (HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, Close, Boond Manager or Odoo), I have nothing to retype between two discovery calls. Plans start at €89 excl. VAT per license per month: see pricing.

Read next: cold call openers and following up without being pushy.

What are the best sales discovery questions?

The ones that get the prospect talking about their pain and its impact. My three favourites: "If you could change just one thing in the way you do it, what would it be?", "What happens if nothing changes by the end of the year?" and "The last time you picked a tool like this, how did it go?".

How many discovery questions should you ask on a cold call?

2 to 4: one on situation, one on pain, one on timing. Keep the rest for the meeting, where 8 to 12 questions are normal.

What is the difference between an open and a closed question?

A closed question is answered with yes or no ("Do you have a CRM?"). An open question makes the prospect elaborate ("How do you keep track of your prospects today?"). In discovery, favour open ones and keep closed ones to confirm.

What should you do when a prospect criticises a competitor?

Do not pile on. Ask what happened, what bothered them and what made them choose it in the first place. They give you their expectations, and you answer on your strengths without badmouthing anyone.

Should you follow a method like BANT or SPIN?

They help you not forget anything: the five groups in this article overlap with their main steps. But on the phone, do not recite the grid. The prospect should feel a conversation, not a questionnaire. BANT is explained in our glossary.

The best rep on the call asks the question, then stays quiet. The prospect does the rest.

Pick three questions from this list for your next session. One on pain, one on impact, one on timing. Try them on twenty calls, keep the ones that get people talking, replace the others.

And next time a prospect badmouths your competitor: smile, and say "I'm listening".