Intro
I usually never talk about the behind-the-scenes of my sales process because I believe there are far more qualified people on the internet that will teach you how to have a 99% close rate on your sales calls.
What I do as my day-to-day is mainly AI automation, so this article will not be about how to close every client that steps into your door, but rather about how to make sure that your discovery/sales calls go as smooth as possible increasing your chances of closing the deal.
What I see everyone doing before a sales call is essentially the same old research process about the prospect: that boring scrolling of their LinkedIn profile, hoping you’ll find something useful to mention on the call, or their website that wasn’t updated since 2012, and all of it done by hand.
So what I thought is: I do discovery and sales calls all the time, what if I could automatically receive some sort of short document with ALL the necessary info about the prospect 1 hour before the actual call with the most important questions to ask before leaving it.
I read it and come far more prepared than 90% of other sales people out there.
Well, let’s dive deep into it.
Subscribe to No BS AI. One real copy-pasteable build like this every week.
Why even bothering
Why should you even bother to know some information about your prospect. Well, the answer is obvious: because the prospect trusts you more if you know their business. That’s the only reason.
They care about their business, their results, their goals, their problems. Tough, but fair.
So what you’re there to do on the sales call is just listen and be present. That’s really it.
But if you sprinkle into the conversation some random knowledge about their business, how much money they raised in Q2, how many employees they hired last month, and similar info in a smart and relevant way, that can really boost your trust because you actually cared enough about them, which almost nobody does. Caring is an underrated skill.
To really make your sales call as smooth as possible, I’d say that the first thing to do is to make sure you know your prospect, and how do you do that? Well, the answer is research.
What we’ll do is go to their LinkedIn, website, google them up, read their last tweets and stuff like that. You must do it manually first to understand where to gather the relevant information from. After that it really comes down to listening.
The brief I fill in per prospect
Now that you understand why you need to know your prospect before the call, here’s what I actually gather on them, something like this:
## Overview
Role: [title], [company] ([one-line descriptor])
Location: [location]
Site: [url]
LinkedIn: [url]
Email: [email]
Source: [how the lead came in, timeline]
Call: [date, time, timezone, meeting link]
## What they sell
[company]'s offer described in plain terms: what it is, how it's packaged, any tools/products layered on top. One quote from them on how they'd describe it themselves.
## Published pricing (verified)
[What's publicly findable, or "none found" plus any self-reported numbers and where they came from.]
## Their stated ICP
[Who they target, with the trigger/pain that makes someone a good fit.]
## What they asked for
[Exactly what was requested on the call/thread, nothing inferred beyond that.]
## Open questions
* [question]
* [question]
* [question]Filling that out by hand for one prospect takes a while: open their site, open LinkedIn, open Google, piece it together yourself. Do that before every call and it adds up fast.
Here’s a Claude skill that will extract it for you, it’s called lead-research and you can easily install it in your system:
## Context
I have a call coming up with a prospect and I want a short brief on them before I go
in. Below is a link to their website and/or LinkedIn, plus anything they’ve already
told me about why we’re talking, if I have that.
## Instructions
Open the link(s) I gave you and search the web for whatever else is public: their
site, their LinkedIn, a pricing page if they have one, reviews, recent posts. Do not
guess or invent anything. If you can’t find something, write “not found” instead of
making it up.
## What I want back
Fill in exactly this template and give me nothing else, no commentary before or after
it:
## Overview
Role: [title], [company] (one-line description)
Location: [location]
Site: [url]
LinkedIn: [url]
## What they sell
Their offer in plain terms: what it is, how it’s packaged, anything layered on top.
## Published pricing (verified)
What’s publicly findable, or “none found”.
## Their stated ICP
Who they say they target, in their own words if you can find them.
## What they asked for
[Leave as a placeholder unless I gave you that context below, I’ll fill this one in
myself.]
## Open questions
* [question]
* [question]
* [question]
## Prospect
Link(s): [paste their site and/or LinkedIn here]
What they already told me (optional): [paste any notes or thread here]Once I have that document I read it carefully, check the website links and their LinkedIn data. Finally, I hop on a call with the prospect knowing enough information to not feel like a dumbass that didn’t even bother to take 30 minutes of their time to google them up.
One of the most important sections of the doc is the “Open questions” one because this will unveil if the prospect is actually a good fit and if you can work together or not.
Save the above skill and try it on your next discovery. Not only will you feel more relaxed because you know the person, but you’ll also establish better trust with them.
Subscribe to No BS AI. One real copy-pasteable build like this every week.
In practice
Here’s the whole flow, start to finish:
Research the prospect before the call, never during it.
Fill in the template above: overview, what they sell, pricing, their ICP, what they asked for, open questions.
If doing it by hand every time is too slow, run the prompt above instead and paste in their URL.
Walk into the call already knowing who you’re talking to.
That’s the short document I pictured getting an hour before every call, and now it actually shows up.
Talk soon,
Ilya