Your salespeople make discovery calls, but with varying results depending on the prospect.

One possible reason is that you don't have a well-defined questioning process.

As you know, questions are the lifeblood of sales. They can both enhance and break the emotional connection with your prospects.

A discovery questionnaire allows you to ensure that every conversation is headed in the right direction.

Here's how to create and standardize it for your team.

What is a discovery questionnaire, and why should you adopt it?

In sales teams, it's common for each salesperson to adapt their prospecting approach to their own style. Depending on their personality and the person they're speaking to, they'll ask different questions to uncover their prospect's needs.

While personalization is a good thing, it can sometimes harm your sales team's performance.

Without predefined discovery questions, your salespeople may get used to asking ineffective questions. Additionally, your new hires may not know what approach to take and may take time to ramp up their performance.

A discovery questionnaire allows you to solve this problem. It's a list that defines the right questions to ask to qualify your prospects and move them towards a deal.

With it, you can:

• Increase lead conversions by making questions with the best results mandatory.
• Better onboard your new hires with a document they can refer to.
• Standardize your sales approach for specific prospect categories.

Interested? Here's how to create your own questionnaire.

In a discovery call, the order in which your salespeople ask questions is crucial.

It's important to quickly address the pain points of your prospects before discussing solutions and getting into more practical details.

This progressive approach is the best way to engage your interlocutor and make them feel that they are at the center of the conversation.

Depending on the stage of your questionnaire, you can define different types of questions:

Need (Why?)

The first step is to introduce the problem.

You want to help your prospect present their current situation and gradually approach their need:

• What is your profession and activity?
• What are the goals of your team?
• Who is responsible for achieving them?
• What are the obstacles you are facing in this regard?
• Why is this work process currently blocked?

Note that you obviously want to steer the discussion towards the problem you want to solve.

Issue (What consequence?)

The second step is to highlight the scope of the problem. You want to see with your prospects what its repercussions are on their business, activity, and personal situation.

• How does this problem affect your activity?
• How does it impact your team and existing processes?
• What does it make you feel personally?

Solution (How?)

It is time to see the light at the end of the tunnel and to discuss solutions. You want to consider your prospect's current reflections on this subject: their current solutions, their limitations, and their opinion on your solution.

• How do you currently solve this problem?
• What tools or processes do you have in place to deal with it?
• What are your human and budgetary resources allocated to it?
• Are you satisfied with these existing solutions?
• What do you think of my product/service as an alternative?
• What do you expect from a provider like me? And what will make you work with us?

Resource (when and how much?)

Now you want to get down to the practical questions. You want to know your prospect's time and budget constraints for implementing a new solution:

• Who is the final decision maker?
• What is the budget you can allocate to this problem?
• When do you want it to be solved?
• How much time do you have to implement a new solution?
• What are your human resources to be trained and coached?

Actions (what to do?)

Finally, you can end the meeting by insisting on a call to action:

• When are you available for a presentation/demo?
• Can I send you a quote, information-comparison documents?
• Do you have any additional questions or concerns?

How to create and implement your discovery questionnaire?

You can use several types of questions to advance the discussion. Here are the three main types, each with a different purpose:

• Open-ended questions allow you to adopt an active listening approach to your prospect. They are to be preferred to let them express themselves and come to their problem on their own. For example, any question that starts with "where, when, who, what, how, why, what", etc.
• Closed-ended questions allow you to delve deeper into their speech and direct the debate. They also allow you to rephrase your prospect's answer to show that you understand their problem. For example, to rephrase: "If I understand correctly...?", "What you're saying is...?" To direct: "Does this situation frustrate you?" "Are you satisfied with x?"
• Semi-open or alternative questions. They help you convince through contrast and extract more information. For example: "Do you prefer x or y?" "Do you have another solution at your disposal and what is it? Or is it the only one?"

Open-ended or closed-ended questions?

A discovery questionnaire is primarily a document to be created in collaboration with your sales team. After all, they are the ones who will be using it!

Here are some best practices for making it a collective effort:

#1 Comparative analysis of existing approaches

Your senior salespeople have surely already dealt with your prospects for a long time. And over the years, they have certainly adopted a questionnaire that worked for them.

During a group meeting, you can ask them to share their techniques and compare them by launching the debate. You can rely on their performance data and everyone's feelings to make a decision.

Once you have made your selection, you can then add them to your list.

#2 Create a clear and precise document

To make it usable for all your salespeople, your questionnaire must be clear and concise. It should include:

• The purpose of the document: why and the usefulness that your salespeople can get from it.
• The usage rules: which questions are mandatory, which are recommended, and which ones are specific to certain cases.
• Sections by call and prospect category.
• Various question examples according to the different stages of the discussion mentioned above.

#3 Coach your salespeople on it

Sharing a document is not enough. You also want to ensure that your salespeople are learning from it. 1-to-1 meetings are a good opportunity for this. For example, you can do shadow listening and analyze weak points in their approach with them. You can see with them when questions are asked at the wrong time and which order of questions is favored.

Noota: Aligning the sales performance of your team

Are you struggling to coordinate the different approaches of your sales team in meetings? At Noota, we have developed a meeting assistant that coaches each of your agents on best sales practices. With it, you can:

• Define a discovery questionnaire in advance.
• Give your salespeople access to the questionnaire in real-time and allow them to follow it as they wish.
• Generate a structured summary by question and send it to your CRM.
• Analyze the impact of each question with a performance dashboard.

Do you want to unlock the full potential of a discovery questionnaire? Try Noota for free.