Why Your Product Isn’t Selling: How a Discovery Call Framework Can Solve It
Learn how to position your offer effectively, uncover hidden opportunities, and build a pipeline of qualified prospects with a proven discovery call framework. Get Discovery Call Workbook Free.
How2Transform, is where ambitious founders and professionals learn practical systems for self-leadership, startup execution, and personal transformation. Every article blends strategy, actionable tools, and mindset shifts. Some of my recent articles in case you missed them:
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“I built it. Why aren’t they coming?”
A few months ago, I met Alex, a talented indie hacker who had just launched a slick AI-powered SaaS product.
The tech worked beautifully. The UI was clean. The codebase was elegant.
But there was a problem.
After six months of late nights and deep work, he had exactly… 3 paying customers.
“I don’t get it,” he told me.
“I’ve built something genuinely useful. I’ve posted on Hacker News. I’ve been tweeting about it. I’ve even offered discounts. Why aren’t people buying?”
That question, “Why aren’t they coming?”, is a quiet heartbreak in the founder world.
Because deep down, it’s not just about sales.
It’s about the gap between the effort you’ve invested and the validation you expected.
Agitate the Pain, The “Build First” Trap
Most product builders fall into the same trap.
We overinvest in technology before we’ve deeply spoken to the people we want to serve.
It’s seductive to keep building:
Adding that one more feature
Refactoring the backend for speed
Tweaking the UI pixel-by-pixel
These things feel like progress. They’re measurable. They’re in our control.
But here’s the brutal truth:
Working tech ≠ working business.
You can have the smartest architecture in your category and still watch sales stall…
… because you’ve solved a problem your ideal customers don’t actually care about right now.
Worse, without customer conversations, you end up pitching in a vacuum.
Your landing page copy is written for “everyone,” which means it resonates with no one.
Your pricing feels arbitrary.
Your demo focuses on features, not outcomes.
And all of this leads to one thing:
A false sense of progress, lots of building, no real traction.
Traction Comes from Knowing Your Customer’s World
The turning point for founders like Alex comes when they realize:
Traction isn’t about having the most advanced product. It’s about having the most relevant solution.
And relevance is impossible without context:
What’s your customer’s most pressing pain right now?
How do they describe it in their own words?
What have they already tried (and failed at)?
What would “success” look like for them in 90 days?
Until you have that clarity, every sales email, every tweet, every product update is a shot in the dark.
That’s why the fastest route from “no traction” to “closing deals” often isn’t adding more features…
…it’s asking better questions, running better discovery calls.
I used to get discovery calls completely wrong.
I’d jump on Teams/Zoom or the phone and spend most of my time talking about what I do, how my offer works, and sharing a few random positive outcomes.
It felt like the “professional” thing to do.
Show up. Impress them. Win the deal.
Except… it wasn’t working as well as I thought.
People said “interesting proposal,” and nothing happened afterwards.
Deals stalled. Conversations went nowhere.
And I never really stopped to ask myself:
“Is this actually the best way to use this time?”
The wake-up call came from a coach
They told me:
“A discovery call isn’t about proving yourself, it’s about uncovering what you don’t yet know.”
That single sentence completely changed my approach.
Instead of filling the air with my pitch, I started asking better questions.
I listened more than I spoke.
And I structured my calls so they worked like a powerful sales positioning engine.
The result?
✅ My close rate jumped.
✅ My pipeline is filled with better-fit opportunities.
✅ I uncovered entirely new business possibilities I wasn’t even looking for.
✅ My reputation started to build and expand
What a Discovery Call Really Is (and Why It Matters)
At its core, a discovery call is:
A structured, intentional conversation to uncover a potential customer’s or stakeholder’s needs, goals, and challenges before presenting a solution.
It’s not a pitch. It’s not a casual chat.
It’s a sales superpower when done right.
Three main purposes:
Understand their reality: the problems they think they have and the ones they don’t yet see.
Position your offer: not as a generic solution, but as the right-fit answer to their situation.
Create opportunity: sometimes for things neither of you planned to discuss.
The Problems a Great Discovery Call Solves
Saves you from chasing bad-fit leads.
Builds trust fast.
Reveals “what you don’t know you don’t know.”
Strengthens your sales pipeline.
The Discovery Call Framework
The Discovery Call Framework is not just for big B2B sales teams.
It’s a simple, repeatable process for any founder to:
Validate assumptions before you invest months of development time
Position your offer so it feels tailor-made
Unlock hidden opportunities you didn’t even know existed
Qualify ideal buyers so you stop chasing dead leads
When you run these calls well, something magical happens:
Customers start telling you exactly what to build, how to talk about it, and what they’d pay for it.
The Playbook: How to Run Discovery Calls That Actually Close
Setup: Who to Talk To and Why
Past leads who didn’t buy (ask why)
Early users who churned or stayed free
Lookalike customers in the same segment as your target
Warm intros from your network
The goal isn’t to pitch. It’s to learn. You’re a detective, not a salesperson - that’s how you should act.
Pre-Call Preparation
Research the prospect like a journalist. Use an AI tool like Perplexity and follow the provided prompt (copy/paste) to prepare yourself with key insights and relevant information about the prospect.
Get the discovery call workbook for the AI assist prompt
Set and clarify your goal before the discovery call
“By the end of this call, I want to know what they value most and exactly how I can help them get it.”
Prepare for the Great Questions (The 3-3-3 Rule)
3 Core Questions:
“What’s your biggest challenge in [specific area] right now?”
“If you could solve one thing immediately, what would it be?”
“What’s held you back from solving this so far?”
3 Deep Follow-Ups:
“Can you walk me through the impact this challenge has on your business?”
3 Clarifiers:
“What would a successful outcome look like in 3 months?”
Get the discovery call workbook for the AI assist prompt
The 5 Phases of a Discovery Call
Once the preparation is there, follow the following 5 phases to conduct the discovery call:
Phase 1: Open & Disarm
Create Psychological Safety and set expectations
Start with gratitude + agenda:
“Thanks for making the time. My goal today is to understand your challenges and goals so we can explore if there’s a fit. No pitches today, just clarity.”
Phase 2: Understand Their World
“What’s the biggest challenge in [X area] right now?”
“What’s the impact if that’s not solved?”
Phase 3: Dig for Context
“What have you already tried?”
“What worked, what didn’t?”
Phase 4: Define Success
“If we were talking 3 months from now, what would make you say this was a success?”
Phase 5: Next Steps
Reflect & Summarise - “So your biggest challenge is [X], but if solved, it could also create [Y]. Did I get that right?”
If they’re qualified: move to a tailored demo
Co-Create Next Steps - “Would it help if I shared how others in your position solved this?”
If not: keep the door open, ask for referrals
Signals to Listen For
Urgency: “We need to solve this yesterday.”
Budget readiness: “We already have a budget for this.”
Decision clarity: “I’m the one who signs off on tools like this.”
Language clues: Write down exact phrases they use to describe their pain, this becomes marketing gold.
Turn Insights into Offers
After 10–15 discovery calls, patterns emerge.
You’ll know:
Which pains are universal (and worth solving)
Which features are “must-have” vs. “nice-to-have”
How to price based on perceived value
Which customer segments are actually ready to buy
Use AI tool with the ready prompt (copy/paste) and come up with the draft offer before you pitch.
Get the discovery call workbook for the AI assist prompt
Follow Up with Action
Within 24 hours, send:
A call recap
The agreed actions
Any promised resources
This keeps momentum alive.
Use case - From confusion to clarity
Let’s go back to Alex.
We worked through 8 structured discovery calls in 2 weeks.
Here’s what happened:
He thought his target market was freelance designers. Turns out, small design agencies had the budget, urgency, and repeatable need.
He thought his best-selling point was AI-powered automation. His calls revealed the real hook was cutting client onboarding time from 2 weeks to 2 days.
One conversation revealed an entirely new use case for event planning firms, a market he hadn’t considered.
The result:
He repositioned his landing page headline in the exact words agencies used.
He created a “2-Day Client Onboarding” package.
Within 6 weeks, he closed his first 5 paying customers, all from those calls.
Mistakes to Avoid
Unfocused calls without structure.
No action or follow-up.
Staying in “discovery mode” forever.
Missing side comments that hint at big wins.
Listening only for what confirms your assumptions.
Free Discovery Call Workbook
I’m sharing a free Discovery Call Workbook including:
A ready-to-use call script
My “Top 12 Open Questions” that unlock deep insights
Templates for turning raw notes into a pitch that resonates
Discovery call checklist
Copy/Paste ready AI prompts
If you’ve been building without traction, this will give you a clear, repeatable way to start selling what people actually want.
Final Thought
If you had one hour with your dream customer tomorrow…
Would you know what to ask?
Drop a comment: What’s one question you always ask on your sales or user research calls?
It was pretty incredible! I didn't realize how because it was the first discovery-call based business I'd ever started. But once I moved into other spaces, I realized how rare that is.
I like your suggestion of thinking of every interaction as a mini Discovery call. I will work on implementing that. My biggest question would be "why did you subscribe to my Substack?" I mostly write for my own healing, so it's not clear that I have a niche or a problem. I'm really solving. I think part of me is still a little mystified about why people want to hear my work.
Many interesting and helpful tips here. Back when I had a business with discovery calls, my close rate was like 95% because everybody wanted the product I was selling: higher SAT scores for their college-bound teenagers. I have a much more difficult time applying the sort of framework to sub stack audiences, since it's not really clear what people are looking for or why they are subscribing to my newsletter. To be honest.