Disc Discovery Call Questions

---
name: disc-discovery-call-questions
description: Prepares a one-page discovery question guide by SPIN type (few situation questions, more problem, implication and need-payoff ones), with the brief's open gaps asked first, a decision process block and what to listen for under each question. Use for "run disc-discovery-call-questions", "what should I ask on the discovery call", "write my discovery questions", "SPIN questions for this call", "help me find out who decides", "my calls never get to the real problem", part of the Claude for Winning Proposals Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Discovery Call Questions

## When To Use
Discovery collects facts and never reaches what the problem costs or who decides. You leave with a clear picture of their current setup and no idea why they would pay to change it. This answers: which questions, in which order, get to consequence, value and the decision inside the time you have?

## When Not To Use
If the client has already given figures and you need to structure what waiting costs, use Cost of Inaction. If you need the note the client sees before the call, use Discovery Call Agenda.

## Inputs
- Your brief review questions and pre-call hypotheses, if you have them, plus the call length and who will attend, by role
- What you already know about the situation, with where you heard it
If you have none of this, I start from the client's name, the topic of the call and its length, in any plain chat, and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
SPIN questions from Huthwaite International (huthwaiteinternational.com/spin-selling), built on observing over 35,000 sales calls: Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff. Its lesson for a prepared seller is to ask few situation questions, because research already answers most of them and senior buyers tire of them, and to spend the call on implications. The failure it prevents is a discovery that ends with "send us a proposal" and no cost, no owner and no reason to act now. Claude prepares the guide; you run the conversation and follow the client, not the page.

## Workflow
1. Ask, all at once: how long is the call and how much of it is yours? Which hypothesis or gap matters most? Who will be in the room, by role?
2. Open with the brief's unanswered gaps (budget, owner, deadline, what was tried), phrased plainly. These come first because without them nothing later can be scoped.
3. Situation: only what research could not answer. Two or three at most; strike any whose answer is on their website.
4. Problem: difficulties and dissatisfactions, one per hypothesis. "Where does [process] break down today?" not "do you have problems with [process]?"
5. Implication: for each problem, what it affects, what it costs, who feels it, what happens if it continues. Write more of these than any other type; they are where urgency comes from. Ask for their figure and unit, never offer one.
6. Need-payoff: the value of solving it, in their words. "If that were fixed, what would it make possible?" Their answer becomes the proposal's opening.
7. Decision block: who else decides, how they decided something similar last time, what would stop this. Then the "listen for" column under every question: the words or figures that would confirm or kill a hypothesis. Fit it all on one page; you pick and adapt.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Discovery Question Guide
Client: [name] · Call: [date, length] · Attending: [roles]

## Open gaps first
| Question | Listen for |
|---|---|
| [gap question] | [what would answer it] |

## Problem and implication
| Type | Question | Listen for | Tests hypothesis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Situation | [only if research could not answer] | [fact] | [#] |
| Problem | [question] | [their words for the difficulty] | [#] |
| Implication | [question] | [their figure and unit, who feels it] | [#] |
| Need-payoff | [question] | [value in their words] | [#] |

## Decision process
| Question | Listen for |
|---|---|
| [who else decides / last time / what would stop this] | [role, step, date] |

## Decision
[You] choose the questions to carry into the call by [call date]; the client's answers, not this guide, decide what goes into the proposal.
```

## Done When
- Implication questions outnumber situation questions, and every question has a "listen for" entry
- The decision process block is present
- The guide fits on one page and leaves room for the client to lead

## Quality Bar
- No situation question whose answer is already public
- Questions are open and neutral: no leading questions, and never a figure or range planted inside one
- No questions about a person's private life or personality
- Claude prepares the questions; you run the call, and the answers are theirs

## Next
Run disc-cost-of-inaction (Cost of Inaction) to prepare how to capture what staying put costs.

## About the makers

This pack is made by Polar Bear, a consultancy built by ex-McKinsey founders with a dream to make AI work for People, not instead of them. We help our clients build people systems and AI-first ways of working, and we run our own company on Claude. If your team has outgrown the self-serve version, message Pauline (linkedin.com/in/paulinebertry).