The first part of a sales call -- or even the whole first call -- is supposed to be "discovery." We're supposed to ask questions. Their words should inform our pitch and demo. But what questions should we ask? What are we trying to learn?
The Problem
After watching roughly 3,000 sales calls from startups, scaleups, and "normal" companies, it's clear that nobody really knows what to look for in discovery. Founders don't know. Sales reps -- even experienced ones -- rarely know. And prospects sure as hell don't know.
An estimated 75-90% of the average sales call is wasted time.
When we fix this, startups tend to take off. The fastest-growing startup helped recently ($0 to $6M in less than 3 months) attributes "knowing exactly what to look for in discovery" as the thing that helped them figure out what product to build and scale super fast.
What Discovery Becomes
Without a framework, discovery turns into a game of whack-a-mole -- a potpourri of random questions:
- Open-ended questions about current state, pain points, and problems... We learn interesting things that are mostly irrelevant.
- Leading questions that paint them into a corner... "If you could increase revenue without lifting a finger, would you?"
- Questions about the supply they want, not the demand they have... Which gives us a list of features they may or may not need.
- Questions from a qualification framework (like BANT or MEDDPICC)... Asking about "budget" or the "economic decisionmaker" before you understand what they want is awkward and offensive.
Prospects get annoyed with these questions but can't explain why. They often ask to "just see the product" to skip what feels like an interrogation.
Then they get even more annoyed because we pitch something that doesn't fit their needs:
Here's the $900b problem we're solving in the world. Here's why it's even more urgent now. Here's why we're solving it. Here's our theory on the problem. Here's the overview of the solution. Here's how the product works at a detailed technical level.
The pitch is designed around an abstract problem that buyers don't actually have -- or a problem they agree exists but isn't what they're trying to accomplish right now. The entire pitch becomes a mostly irrelevant lecture.
In many cases, when buyers buy, they buy despite most of our sales call, not because of it -- and they usually buy for reasons we don't understand.
PULL Is a Discovery Framework
You can use the PULL framework for your discovery framework. You should have this in your head -- even in a doc -- which you are filling out on a call.
What You're Trying to Understand:
- P -- Project: What exactly are they trying to accomplish? (The "project" on their to-do list)
- U -- Urgency: Of all the things they could prioritize, why this thing, and why now? (Why it's urgent or unavoidable)
- L -- List: What have they looked into and/or tried so far? (Their list of options)
- L -- Limitations: Why aren't those things good enough? (The limitations of their options)
PULL is the minimum essential information to know what they want -- whether the deal is outbound, inbound, SMB, enterprise. Once we know PULL, we know what to offer -- something that fits their PULL, with no extraneous concepts, screens, or words.
Example: AI Tool for Cloud Infrastructure
During a sales call, a prospective customer says:
"Yeah so we need to move our MVP from Vercel to something more serious because we're scaling now and have outgrown Vercel, and so we are considering bringing in a DevOps consultant to help us build our new platform."
Based on this quote, fill out the PULL framework:
Their PULL (with question marks for unknowns):
- P -- Project: Move product onto "serious" infrastructure (?) -- What does "serious" mean to them?
- U -- Urgency: Scaling, have "outgrown" Vercel (?) -- What does it mean to have "outgrown" Vercel?
- L -- List: DevOps consultant -- This is clear, they're considering a consultant.
- L -- Limitations: (?) -- Why isn't a DevOps consultant good enough?
Based on the framework and the question marks, you know exactly what to ask to fill out their PULL and have confidence you can pitch the right thing.
Scenario A
What You Learn: "Serious" infrastructure is, in their mind, infrastructure-as-code on AWS/GCP. They have "outgrown" Vercel because their backend has specific needs Vercel can't support. The DevOps consultant is quite expensive ($30k+).
Your pitch: "A way to create serious custom infra you can trust, at the same quality level as a DevOps consultant, for less than 10% of the cost."
Scenario B
What You Learn: Same as Scenario A, but with one difference: "I'm worried we're not going to be able to maintain what the DevOps consultant gives us."
Your pitch: "A way to create serious custom infra you can trust, at the same quality level as a DevOps consultant, but it's basically self-managing so you don't have to worry about maintaining it."
Describing anything other than this gives the potential customer more things to think about -- things not directly related to their PULL. The more random things they have to think about, the less likely they are to decide and buy.
What to Demo?
Maybe nothing! Maybe just the description is enough! Or if we need to demo something:
- Scenario A: Something that indicates we can create serious infra -- e.g., a cloud infra diagram our product generates.
- Scenario B: The diagram plus something to indicate it's mostly self-managing (e.g., infra alert + AI suggestion + simple "yes/no" for the engineer).
The Discovery Process
How to consistently get prospective customers to fill out the PULL framework:
-
Ask why they took the call and what they're hoping to get out of it. This is now required for all calls -- outbound or inbound. They will often fill out some piece of the PULL framework, and you can double-click into the other pieces.
-
If that doesn't work, ask 1-2 discovery questions trying to get them to explain some piece of their PULL. Example: "As it relates to QA and release cycles, what are you trying to change in the near term?" (This performs better than a very open-ended "what are your priorities?")
-
If that gets you nowhere, talk about what others have said and see if that rings a bell. You might have a "demand slide" showing what other people's PULL has been. If nothing resonates, say "Huh, seems like you're all set then?"
-
If that gets you nowhere, end the call early or "YOLO-a-demo" -- show the product/pitch and see if any PULL-related synapse fires. Remember that anything they say could help you fill out the PULL framework.
If they have PULL, this should get it out of them. If they don't have PULL, well, that's a different problem.
The Key Insight
What Changes When You Know PULL:
- Discovery might take 20 minutes or 5 -- but it's pointed in the right direction
- You know what you're looking for -- if they don't have PULL, they're not going to buy
- You don't waste effort following up with non-buyers
- Your pitch fits their actual needs, not abstract problems
- Demo only what matters to their specific PULL
After you've filled out the PULL framework, you may need to add qualification questions from BANT/MEDDPICC. But that comes after:
- You give a conceptual overview of your supply
- They say your supply sounds like it fits their demand
That's when qualification questions become natural rather than awkward and offensive.