In the Gong Research Labs series, we publish data from analyzing sales calls with natural language processing and AI. Subscribe here for new data every week.









The next time you fire up GoToMeeting or Zoom to do a discovery call, remember the data points you're about to learn in this article. They will serve you well.

An AI analysis of a large pool of sales call recordings we did here at Gong.io highlights how the most effective discovery calls look and sound.

As you read, mentally compare how your discovery calls stack up. You may just have an epiphany that sends you to whatever tropical island your company chooses for President's Club this year.

Let's take a look at the x-ray of a winning discovery call...

First, the most successful discovery calls break into three sections:

The algorithms that analyzed the calls in this study are able to detect what topics are being discussed at each point of the call.

The most successful salespeople tend to talk about rapport-related topics at the beginning of their calls, dive deeply into 3-4 customer problems, and then wrap up logistics and next steps at the end.

Why "3-4 customers problems"? Why not more? Why not less? That brings us to the next data point...

Diving into 3 - 4 customer problems correlates with the highest likelihood of advancing the deal to a firm next step.

Once you go beyond four problems, the deal starts to slip through your fingers and you're more likely to chalk it up as CL-Lost.

In hindsight, this may be because you're spreading the customers' focus too thin (That one big, nasty problem seems less urgent in the customer's eyes when you've talked about four other problems).

Let's unpack how you should address "customer problems" even further.

When it comes to customer problems, the more questions you ask, the better

Translation: when you're discussing customer problems, there is a tight relationship between the sheer number of questions you ask, and success.

Top salespeople ask 10.1 "problem questions" per hour. Average performers only ask 6.3.

(For more data about asking questions on sales calls, check out the article I wrote two weeks ago - it goes hand-in-hand with this one).

Make your discovery calls feel like a tennis match

The more times you "take turns" talking with your customer, the higher your likelihood of success.

A high number of "speaker switches" per minute and your odds of getting a second meeting have a strong connection.

The takeaway is that discovery calls should feel similar to a casual chat over coffee with a friend - not a "light-in-the-eyes" interrogation.

Make your sales conversations feel like a ping pong or tennis match, not a football game - where the longer you have possession of the ball, the better.

To further illustrate that top salespeople have more balanced sales conversations, check out how they spread their questions throughout the sales call compared to their peers:

You don't have to know the exact numbers to see the trend: Top sellers evenly spread their questions throughout the entire conversation in a balanced, natural way. Average reps "frontload" their questions at the beginning as if they're going through a checklist.

When you find yourself having a natural, balanced, two-way conversation with your customer (rather than an interrogation), you'll find that the "talk-to-listen ratio" of the conversation ends up somewhere in this neighborhood:

Remember that this is the ratio of "top performing reps."

This number becomes more meaningful when we compare it with the talk/listen ratios of "average," and "low performing" salespeople:

There's a sharp contrast between the talk/listen habits of top reps, and their peers (the difference between average and bottom reps is a bit less stark, interestingly).

While you probably "get this" intellectually, I challenge you to question whether you're anywhere close to the ideal ratio.

Most salespeople - without measuring their own talk/listen ratio - underestimate just how much uninterrupted speaking they do on their sales calls. Before I measured my own, I figured I was doing 50:50. It (embarrassingly) turned out to be 72:28 (Ugh...)

That's all for now. Tag a friend that will find this useful in the comments below.

To get the rest of the data on effective discovery calls, check out these resources:



