Sales Qualification: Discovery Calls + Qualification Frameworks + 24 Discovery Questions
MEDDIC, SPIN, SUGAR and SPICED framework + 24 ready-to-use discovery questions
Hey - it’s Alex!
Welcome to Startup Business Tips, a bi-weekly newsletter, where I share with you 3 actionable growth tactics that will help you quickly grow your SaaS business from €0 to €1 million ARR 🚀.
Today we cover:
1️⃣ How to qualify a lead: Sales Qualification Frameworks (SPIN, MEDDIC, SPICED, SUGAR)
2️⃣ Sales Discovery Calls (1-step vs. 2-step sales process)
3️⃣ 24 ready-to-use Sales Discovery Questions
👉 Bonus material - Top Product Marketing LinkedIn Post Database by Peter Kortvel
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1. Sales Qualification Frameworks: How to qualify a lead
What does it mean to qualify a lead?
Qualifying a lead ultimately means finding out, if:
✅ the lead is the right fit for you and your product
✅ you and your product are a good fit for them
So it’s a mutual decision.
Both parties decide if it’s a good idea to invest more time in the upcoming sales/buying process (because they know it’s worth the time).
Usually, to collect all the relevant information, qualification consists of 2 parts:
1️⃣ Research (before discovery call)
2️⃣ Discovery Call
Benefits of a sales qualification method
To not just follow your gut feeling, it helps to have qualification criteria.
Using a sales qualification method comes with a few benefits:
✅ Gives you and your (growing) sales team a structure to follow
✅ Improves the quality of your discovery
✅ Improves your pipeline quality & forecast accuracy
✅ Foundation for a shared common understanding and language (internally)
Qualification Criteria - The 5 dimensions of qualification
Regardless of the exact framework you’re following, I see 5 dimensions of qualification:
Ideal Customer
Need
Situation
Problem & Pains
Implications
Decision Process
Stakeholders (Champion / Economic Buyer)
Roadmap
Urgency
Competition / Alternative Solutions
I like to qualify on at least 3 dimensions - regardless of the chosen qualification method.
Dimension 1: Ideal Customer Profile
Do they belong to the right type of company/persona? And does your product fit their usecase?
Dimension 2: Needs (current situation, pains, and implications)
Do you understand their status quo? What is their current solution? And can you identify a pain/challenge? Plus, do they want to fix the problem? Do you see a way how you/your product can help them?
Dimension 3: Decision Process
Do you have a (basic) understanding of who takes the decision (aka. decision maker), who drives the deal (aka. champion), and what the process looks like? Is there a specific timeline or critical event that drives urgency? What are the criteria for making the decision?
In the end, doing a discovery to qualify a lead is always about:
✅ Getting a deep understanding of their current situation
✅ Identify what is shitty about the current situation (pain)
✅ What it means for them if they don’t fix the problem (implications)
✅ What does a better situation look like for them? Why is this important?
✅ How would they ‘rate’ a good or bad solution?
✅ Is there any urgency to fix it and what will the decision process look like (who, when, how)?
✅ What are the next steps?
✅ What could block the deal? What are the top objections?
4 Sales Qualification Frameworks
There are a few sales qualification methodologies that will help you better qualify leads and run a good discovery.
Each of the methodologies follows a bit different approach, but all of them focus initially on 2 main parts (that are crucial in any discovery):
1️⃣ Understanding the current SITUATION
2️⃣ Identifying a PAIN
Here are 4 sales methods I highly recommend 👇
1. MEDDIC
MEDDIC stands for Metrics, Economic Buyer, Decision Criteria, Decision Process, Identify Pain, and Champion.
Want to learn more about MEDDIC? Check out Hubspot’s MEDDIC article.
2. SPIN
Another very popular one. SPIN stands for Situation, Pain, Implications, Need-payoff.
Pipedrive wrote a great article on SPIN selling.
And also check out how Avoma founder using SPIN to sell their product.
3. SUGAR
Developed by Stephanie Sgura, SUGAR stands for Situation, Urgency, Gap Identification, All Stakeholders and Roadmap.
You can learn more about this method on Stephanie’s Blog.
4. SPICED
SPICED framework is designed by Winning by Design and stands for Situation, Pain, Impact, Critical Event, Decision.
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2. Sales Discovery Calls
Doing a sales discovery call is the best way to qualify (or also disqualify) a lead.
Discovery Calls (in 1-step and 2-step sales processes)
Today in software sales you see two ways of selling.
1-step sales process
This means you combine the discovery call and the sales product demo in one meeting. It’s called disco demo.
Usually, you’ll spend the first part of the meeting doing your discovery, followed by the demo.
If you follow this 1-step sales process, don’t make the mistake of skipping your discovery, make sure you still have enough time for your discovery.
If possible try to separate discovery and demos and follow a 2-step sales process.
2-step sales process
You run 2 separate meetings. First, you do a short 15-30 minute discovery call, then followed by a longer 45-60 minute sales product demo.
The advantage of a 2-step sales process is:
✅ you have enough time to do a proper discovery
✅ you can personalize your demo (based on your learnings in the disco call)
✅ you can make sure that all relevant stakeholders are involved in the process
Either way, without a proper discovery and the right discovery questions, you’ll have a hard time collecting all the important information, and you’ll end up wasting a lot of time with prospects who aren’t ready to buy.
In the next section, I will share with you 24 ready-to-use sales discovery questions.
But before we do this. I want to share with you one very important note.
Adding value to prospects (in your discovery) 🚨
Don’t forget to also add value for the prospect in your discovery. Too often I see SaaS founders and sellers purely focusing on asking all their questions. But by doing so, they forget to add value for the prospect.
You don’t want your discovery call to be a call where you only ask questions so that your prospect feels like being in an interrogation.
At the end of the discovery, both parties need to mutually agree that it makes sense to move on.
So it’s not enough that you only ‘qualify’, you need to give a bit of value already.
This can come in different ways, e.g.
✅ Highlighting your value proposition (1-sentence value prop)
✅ Sneak preview of your product (5 minutes highlighting main capabilities)
✅ Giving your expert opinion (about their current situation) and sharing how other customers of yours overcome the challenge (sharing case study)
✅ Sharing (some parts) of your sales deck
3. Sales Discovery Questions (24 example questions)
Below you will find a list of discovery questions that will help you gain insights about your prospect and qualify properly.
But before we come to the list, I want to share 2 important insights to keep in mind.
1. The way you ask the question matters (aim for long responses)
There is a super interesting stat by Gong. It shows that successful salespeople get longer answers to their questions.
So to get long (insightful) responses from buyers, you need to ask open questions.
2. Don’t overload with questions (11-14 questions are best).
Gong analyzed a lot of sales calls and found out that the sweet spot is 11-14 questions.
If you ask too many sales discovery questions, the conversation will feel like an interrogation. Too few, and you won’t unearth enough pain points.
List of 24 great B2B SaaS Sales Discovery Questions 👇
I’ve clustered the questions around the main qualification criteria.
Questions about Ideal Customer
How did you find us?
Please tell me a bit more about your company? What’s the current priority for you/your company?
Can you tell me a bit more about your role? What are you responsible for?
This can also include questions about critical criteria for your business. Some examples:
How many SaaS tools do you use in your company? (—> e.g. if you run a SaaS Access Management tool)
How much churn do you have? (—> e.g. if you run a SaaS to reduce churn)
Questions about the (Current) Situation
How do you currently deal with [XYZ challenge]?
Can you walk me through the current process of [topic/usecase]?
Can you help me to understand your current solution to [topic/usecase]?
I want to be sure I fully understand how you deal with [topic/usecase]. Can you tell me more about it?
What other software products do you use right now [related to this topic]?
How satisfied are you with the current solution?
Questions about Problem/Pains & Implications
What challenges are you facing right now when it comes to [XYZ topic]?
Help me understand your biggest challenge when it comes to [XYZ topic]?
What effect would it have on you/your company/your costs etc. if you solve [problem]?
What would be an ideal result for you 6 months after implementing our tool?
Questions about Urgency
What have you done so far to solve the [XYZ challenge]?
Why is it so important for you to solve this specific problem? And also why now?
Help me to understand: Is there any specific reason why you want to fix the problem right now?
What’s your timeline to fix the problem/ implementing a solution?
Questions about Decision Process & Stakeholders
What do you expect from a great solution? What’s essential and what’s less important?
Who else needs to be involved in the next steps?
Tell me, who is in charge of making the decision? Who needs to be on board?
How many people would use the product?
Questions about Competition
What are you doing if you can not solve the [XYZ challenge]? Do you have any other solution in mind?
What other solutions do you consider right now?
What are the other solutions you are looking at?
Apply to your business - Your next step!
Choose one of the sales qualification frameworks and pick the relevant discovery questions for your product and target audience (SMB vs. enterprise market).
Then apply them to your business:
1️⃣ Create a Discovery Cheatsheet (with all the questions)
Create a document on how you run your discovery and the questions you need to ask.
Having a cheatsheet helps you to collect all the relevant info and qualify better (and faster).
2️⃣ Embed it in your CRM
This means adding custom fields in your CRM and making them mandatory fields to move the deal forward in your pipeline.
Additionally, you can add your discovery cheatsheet/list of questions as templates to your activities (e.g. discovery call activity)
3️⃣ Record your discovery calls (and demos)
Review (as a team) your calls and coach each other.
If you need help or want me to review your discovery, feel free to reach out to me.
💪 Bonus material (software, content, news) - Top Product Marketing LinkedIn Post Database
Peter Kortvel collected the best product marketing LinkedIn Posts of 2023 in a single database.
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Positioning
Messaging & Copywriting
GTM
Pricing and much more
So If you’re looking for great content for your next reading session, consider this database.
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