#22: Defining Current And Desired State on The Qualification Call

Read time: 3 min

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Today, I’m going to discuss the primary goal you are looking to establish on the qualification call.

I’ve said this many times that deals are won and lost on the discovery. From the approach I'm going to discuss today, I believe this framework will offer better clarity.

The problem I see is oftentimes founders will not ask the key questions during the discovery call in order to set the right cadence for the remainder of the buying journey.

As stated, “People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

You show how much you care by being a good listener and asking great questions.

You show how much you know by understanding their current and future state

Listening is not understanding the words of the question asked. Listening is understanding why the question was asked in the first place. 

~Simon Sinek

When I hop on a discovery call with a new prospect, the process I use to understand their current vs future state is simple.

Let’s use my ICP as an example.

I know my ICP generally is struggling to build out a repeatable playbook. I also know there are 6 steps to building out “most” sales playbooks.

1. Lead gen

2. Discovery

3. Demo

4. Scoping

5. POC

6. Negotiation / Close

What I do is ask questions to understand how they are currently managing each step of the process. Here’s an example of some of the questions I might ask.

Questions To Identify Current State

• How are you generating TOFU?

• How many leads do you generate weekly?

• How many of those leads are considered qualified opportunities?

• Help me understand how you qualify deals - what does that look like?

• Walk me through how you demo prospects?

• Do you run free or paid POC’s?

• What’s the conversion at the conclusion of a POC?

What I’m doing here is understanding their current workflow and looking for all the blind spots. Identifying the things they’re doing incorrectly and what needs to be buttoned up. I follow up by asking questions to understand ideally where they want to be.

Questions To Identify Desired State

• In a perfect world what does the ideal situation like when managing ________?

• What constraints or limitations should be considered when working toward your ideal state?

• If we’re able to deliver on expectations what would success look or feel like when you reach it?
  

What I did here is establish how they are “currently” managing things and how “ideally” they’d like to managing things (i.e. showing how much I care). 

In between those two states (current & desired) is a gap. That gap is where I can show them how much I know. This is what creates a highly personalized buying experience for your customer. Use this framework to qualify leads better on the needs part of BANT.


Key Takeaways:

• Write down and itemize the different steps of your ICPs workflow.

• Know all the areas they can be potentially exposed (struggling).

• Ask questions to understand each individual step better.

• Once needs are identified outline their ideal situation.

That’s it for today folks.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re ready to level up you can book a call with me here.