Win Discovery Call Guide

---
name: win-discovery-call-guide
description: Writes a Discovery Call Guide for one prospect, with an agenda to agree at the start, situation, problem, implication and need-payoff questions written for them, room for the cost of doing nothing in their numbers, who else decides and the next step to ask for. Use for "run win-discovery-call-guide", "prep my discovery call", "what should I ask on the call", "SPIN questions for this prospect", "my discovery calls go nowhere", "help me run a first meeting", "build the case on the call", part of the Claude Guide for Finding Clients Pack by Polar Bear.
---

# Discovery Call Guide

## When To Use
Your discovery calls collect facts and never build the case: you leave with their headcount and tools, and no sense of what the problem costs them or why they would act now. Run this before one call to walk in with the few questions that matter for this prospect.

## When Not To Use
If you do not yet know what is missing on this deal, start with Deal Qualification Checklist and bring its open questions here. If the call is a friendly catch-up with a past client, a reason to talk and two open questions beat a guide.

## Inputs
- What you know about the prospect: your research, their message, how the call came about
- The open questions from your Deal Qualification Checklist, if you have one
- The length of the call and who will be on it, by role
If you have none of this, I start from the prospect's name and the reason they booked, and mark the output as a first draft.

## Approach
SPIN questioning comes from Huthwaite International's research on what successful sellers ask: situation, problem, implication and need-payoff questions, in roughly that order. The judgment is in the balance: few situation questions, because the client gets bored telling you what you could have read, and more implication and need-payoff questions, because that is where the client builds the case for change in their own words. It breaks when read aloud as a script; this is a guide you glance at, not a form you fill.

## Workflow
1. Ask at most three questions: why they agreed to the call, in their words; what you already know from research; and what you want to be true when the call ends.
2. Draft the opening: purpose, time available, and what happens at the end (for example, agreeing whether a next conversation makes sense). You propose it and ask if they want to add anything.
3. Situation: two or three questions only, on what research could not answer. Cut any question whose answer is on their website.
4. Problem: three or four questions that surface difficulties and dissatisfactions with how things work now. Write them around what this prospect is likely to face, marked as your hypothesis.
5. Implication: questions that let them trace the consequences (time, money, risk, people, missed chances) and put a figure on the cost of doing nothing in their own numbers. I leave the figure blank; I never estimate it for them.
6. Need-payoff: questions that let them say what solving it would be worth and what would be different. Then who else is involved in a decision like this, by role, and the next step you will ask for, with a date.
7. Add a short "listen for" list: words that show a real priority, signs the decision sits elsewhere, and doing it with AI as an alternative they may raise.

## Output Format
```markdown
# Discovery Call Guide: [prospect], [date]
## Opening to agree
- Purpose: [one line] / Time: [minutes] / At the end: [what we decide]
## Questions
| Type | Question for this prospect | Why ask it (hypothesis or gap) |
|---|---|---|
| Situation | [question] | [what research did not answer] |
| Problem | [question] | [hypothesis] |
| Implication | [question] | [consequence to explore] |
| Need-payoff | [question] | [value they could state] |
## Cost of doing nothing, in their numbers
[Left blank for the call: what it costs, per what period, by their own figure]
## Who else decides
[Roles to ask about]
## Listen for
- [signals]
## Decision
[You decide on the call which next step to ask for, and agree a date with the client before you hang up.]
```

## Done When
- The opening fits in three sentences and ends with a question
- No situation question can be answered from public sources
- Implication and need-payoff questions outnumber situation questions
- The cost of doing nothing is left for the client to state
- A next step to ask for is written down

## Quality Bar
- Questions are written for this prospect, never a generic list
- Hypotheses are marked as yours, so you test them rather than assert them
- One question at a time; no stacked questions
- Recording the call needs the client's consent first, and the rules vary by place; check with a qualified adviser

## Next
Run win-discovery-call-recap (Discovery Call Recap) to play the call back before writing a proposal.

## 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).