← The Sales Station ~ dish 07 of 10 · the sales station

Discovery Question Generation

Before the first call, you need to sound prepared. The station generates questions that sound like you, informed by what's public about their business. But you are writing the first three by hand.

The job

A new prospect is booked for Tuesday. The rep needs discovery questions that sound specific to their business, not like a CRM template. The rep could spend two hours researching the prospect’s industry, their company, their likely problems. The station does this in the notes and generates five questions.

But here’s the thing: the station’s first three questions are calibration questions. The rep reads them, writes three of their own, and compares. What’s different? The station’s questions are information-gathering. The rep’s are insight-seeking. Once the rep shows the station the difference, the station learns.

Plated well: the rep walks into a first call with questions that feel tailored to the prospect’s situation and sound like the rep’s own thinking.

The recipe

All seven ingredients still apply. The leverage on this dish is Training (Ingredient #1). Question quality depends on the rep understanding what separates a weak question from a sharp one.

Training is the load-bearing ingredient because the station learns what sharp sounds like by watching the rep write. Examples show the station three of your favorite questions from past calls. Guardrails protect against template questions that feel generic. Output Over Process means: tell the station the destination: “questions that make the prospect think about their situation differently,” not the structure. Measurement is indirect but real: are these questions opening conversations that move to next steps, or are they stalling?

How to build it

  1. The Chef writes the first three. Before this dish runs, you write three discovery questions you are proud of. For a prospect like the one coming in Tuesday.

  2. The station generates questions. Reading what’s public about the prospect’s company, industry, role, and recent signals.

  3. The Chef reads both. Compares. What’s the difference in approach?

  4. Collect the public research. News about the company, the industry, trigger events, decision-maker signals. The station uses this, not guesses.

  5. Set the guardrails. No template questions. No “What are your biggest challenges?” unless that’s actually a question you ask. No questions based on invented needs.

  6. Frame the destination. One sentence: “Questions that make the prospect realize something about their situation they hadn’t named yet.”

  7. Limit the deployment. The Chef writes the first three questions for the first call. The station generates the next three as warm-up. By call four with the same prospect, the Chef reviews the station’s questions. Do they feel like the right calibration? If yes, the station can run faster. If no, sharpen the training.

What breaks it

  • The Chef never writes the first three. The station has no examples of your thinking. It copies a template instead. You bypass the learning step.

  • The station generates questions without research. It asks “what are your biggest challenges” because it doesn’t know what you sell or who this person is. Make research mandatory first. The station reads what’s public: job history, company size, industry trends, recent news about the company.

  • The Chef reads the station’s questions but never compares. The station generates questions. You send them. You never ask: what did the station miss? What did it get right? That comparison is where the station learns.

  • The Chef stops writing questions. By call two, the Chef reads the station’s questions and sends them without writing their own first. The station loses the training signal and drifts back to generic.

When it’s working

By call three, the rep is writing the first three questions, comparing to the station’s three, and seeing the patterns. By call six, the station is generating questions that feel specific enough that the rep uses them almost unchanged.

The signal: the rep walks into a call and the prospect is already thinking differently because the questions reframed the situation.

Monday Move

Write the first three discovery questions for your next new prospect. Have the station read what’s public about their company and industry. Have the station generate five questions. Compare. What’s different in approach? Save that comparison. It’s the training data.

Dish 7 of 10 on the Sales Station. Build-note leverage: Training (Ingredient #1). Chef stays in DIALING stance.