What are some of your core business goals for the next year/quarter?: Consider how long your product or service would take to set up, use, and garner results when determining the specific period you mention.
When is the deadline for achieving these goals? Your meeting may be a month before the company’s annual goal assessment, in which case you’d pitch your offering to help them improve on goal metrics in the following year.
Which areas of your current business processes are you happy with? This question should help you understand what’s working well at the company and why.
Which areas of the business would you like to improve on? Here, you might be able to pinpoint areas where your product or service could improve upon the organization’s existing systems.
Questions to identify the prospect’s challenges
Now that you know what the business wants to achieve, it’s time to figure out what’s holding them back. Remember, the point of these sales discovery questions is to figure out how to help your prospect overcome an issue and attain their goals.
To find out more about the challenges your prospect faces, work these questions into the conversation:
What obstacles have you faced preventing you from reaching your goals? Try to avoid directing the question to a specific area of their business to ensure you get a broader sense of the problems faced.
Tell me about some actions you’ve taken to overcome these obstacles: The prospect’s answer should give you insight into how the company approaches problems and where its priorities lie.
What alternative solutions have you considered? Use this question to determine challenges preventing the business from investing in other solutions, such as budget.
What do you think the ideal solution would be? You may hear some interesting answers here, but use them to pick up on what success looks like in the prospect’s eyes.