Free tool

Sales Discovery Questions Generator

A question plan for your next discovery call, built around what you sell and who you're selling to, with the insight each question uncovers.

How it works

Describe the deal

Add what you sell. Industry, the buyer's role, company size and known pains are optional but make the questions sharper.

Get a question plan

Bridge writes an opener and questions for each stage, with the insight each answer uncovers.

Run the call

Copy the plan into your call notes or CRM and tick off the stages as you cover them.

Example output

Discovery Plan for a Home Insurer

Sample discovery questions. Yours follow the same layout.

Open the call

Thanks for making the time. I'd like to understand how your team handles call volume today, especially after storms, and whether what we do is relevant. If it is, we can agree on a next step at the end; if not, I'll say so. Does that work for you?

Situation

1
Walk me through what happens to your queues the day after a big storm.
Whether peaks are predictable enough to staff for, or a capacity problem.

Pain

1
You mentioned hold times over 20 minutes after storms. What have you tried so far to bring them down?
What has already failed, and why a new approach might be needed.
2
How do you review call quality today when volume spikes?
Whether quality scoring is manual and drops off when it matters most.

Impact

1
What happens to policyholders who give up waiting after a claim?
The cost of the problem in churn, complaints or regulator attention.

Decision process

1
Who else would be involved in choosing a replacement for the current phone system?
The buying group, including IT and procurement, before you are surprised by them.

Budget and timeline

1
With the current contract ending in March, what would need to happen by when to switch in time?
A real deadline and the steps working back from it.

Look up before the call

Their public storm-season updates and complaint statistics
The buyer's background on LinkedIn

Ask the questions that qualify the deal, not the ones that fill the call

A discovery call decides whether there is a deal at all. In 30 minutes you need to understand how the prospect works today, which problem is painful enough to fix, what it costs them, who else has a say, and what is driving the timing. Reps who wing it ask what the company does, pitch too early and hang up without knowing who signs.

The Sales Discovery Questions Generator writes a question plan for one call. Tell it what you sell and what you know about the prospect: industry, the buyer's role, company size and any pain they have mentioned. It returns a short opener that agrees the purpose and outcome of the call, then questions in the order a good discovery conversation runs: situation, pain, impact, decision process, and budget and timeline. Under each question is the insight its answer gives you, so you know what you are listening for. A head of operations and a CFO get different questions, because they feel different parts of the problem.

The plan never states facts about the prospect that you didn't provide. If a question would need an assumption about their tools, numbers or competitors, it is asked rather than asserted. It ends with a short list of things to look up before the call, so you don't spend the prospect's time on what their website already says.

Who uses a discovery question plan

Account executives before a first call

Turn an inbound form or a referral note into a focused plan in a couple of minutes, tailored to the buyer's role.

SDRs booking qualified meetings

Use the pain and impact questions to check there is a real problem before you hand the deal to an AE.

Founders doing their own sales

Get a structure for discovery when you don't have a sales playbook yet, without sounding like you are reading a script.

Sales managers coaching reps

Generate a plan for a live deal and use it in a deal review to show what good discovery for that account looks like.

Frequently asked questions

What are good discovery questions in sales?

Open questions that get the buyer to describe their situation, the problem in their own words, what it costs them, how they make decisions and what is driving the timing. Good discovery questions are specific to the buyer's role and never pitch the product in disguise.

How many questions should I ask on a discovery call?

Plan 12 to 16 and expect to ask about half. Follow the conversation, go deeper where the pain is real and make sure you cover decision process and timing before the call ends.

Is this based on SPIN, MEDDIC or BANT?

It borrows from all three. Situation and pain questions follow the SPIN order, impact questions quantify the problem, and the decision process, budget and timeline questions cover what MEDDIC and BANT look for, phrased so they don't feel like a qualification checklist.

Will it invent details about my prospect?

No. It only uses what you type and does not look anything up. If a question depends on something you don't know, such as which phone system they use, it is phrased as a question.

What should I do after the discovery call?

Write up what you learned while it is fresh: the pain, its impact, who decides and the next step you agreed. Paste the call transcript into the discovery call summarizer to get that write-up in a minute. Summarize a discovery call →

Can Bridge update my CRM after customer calls?

Yes. Bridge takes notes on your customer calls and, with Attio connected, can propose or make the CRM update from those notes, with you approving the change. See how →