[00:00:00] Fi Johnston
What we wanna do instead is understand what their goals are. What would it look like if this went the way that you wanted it to? We wanna get really clear about what the client's goal is, and then you can make a recommendation based on what I've heard and what your goals are, this particular option is the most suitable. And let me give you a couple of reasons why I recommend that. That is the way to go.
Intro
If we want to be able to tip the scales towards the favor of marginalized people, we need to understand the secrets to making money in small business. The more we talk about money and the secrets that usually stay at the golf club, the more likely we are to be able to make money.
My mission is to get more money into the hands of. Good people, specifically good business people like you. This is Money Secrets, the place to learn about the money secrets of successful small business owners. Let's go.
Acknowledgement of Country
[00:01:00] This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Warri people of the KO nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work, and play on. I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present. And note that sovereignty has never been seeded. This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Fi
Hey there, listener. It's Fee Johnston here, the host of Money Secrets, the podcast, which you are listening to. If this is your first episode with me, hello. I am a chartered accountant, a money coach, and a business strategist who is obsessed with small business, and my mission is to get more money into the hands of good people like you.
I see small business as such a tool for economic empowerment, but only if we actually understand how to [00:02:00] make and manage money so that we can pay ourselves well and create an impact on the world through our small businesses. If you are a regular, you've probably heard me say that many times. Welcome back and thank you for listening.
This episode is part two in a four part series called The Sales Sprint. It is inspired by a challenge or a little mini program that we created and ran inside Good Money Club in October, 2025, and I decided to share some of the. Information, the training and advice within that program on the podcast, if you go to the show notes, you'll also see that there is a downloadable workbook, so you can go through the sales sprint yourself.
There are some really actionable items on there that are gonna help you get yourself in a position to get people to say yes [00:03:00] to your proposals. Last episode, we talked about how to bring the right ideal client into your business. And today we are gonna talk about how to run a discovery call. Now, the first thing that I want to say is I wanna shout out Julia Hewitt, who was on my business, bestie Mia Fireman's podcast, got marketing, uh, maybe six months ago, and they did a mock discovery call together and it blew my mind.
Julia Hewitt is a sales expert. She's a legend, and I've taken a lot of inspiration from that conversation and also bringing together what I know from doing Discovery calls myself for 15 years. That is how long I have had my own business and discovery calls has always been how I get the majority of my business.
So thank you to Jules and Mia for the inspo, and I'm going to now take you through how to [00:04:00] get the most out of your discovery calls. So let's start by saying that your sales process starts long before the actual discovery call is booked. So first of all, you wanna make sure that you're bringing the right clients into your orbit.
You wanna make it obvious how you want potential clients to book a call with you and how to do that. You wanna showcase your packages and prices on your website if possible, and you wanna get some questions answered in the booking call process. You wanna prepare for the discovery call by doing a little bit of stalking, and you wanna make sure that you have understood as much as you possibly can about the client.
Before you get on the call with them. Now, once we get to the discovery call, what we wanna do is think about the call as an opportunity to position yourself as an expert. So [00:05:00] what does that mean? Look, if you heard some of my discovery calls in the first few years of my business. I would've sounded something like this.
Um, hi, I'm fee. Um, thank you so much for the call. Um, yeah, um, uh, yeah, I'm an accountant and um, I can help you with your numbers and, and stuff Now. No shade to anyone who still sounds like that on a discovery call. God only knows how I actually manage to attract clients in those first couple of years. I knew that I could do really great work for them, but it took me a long time to work out how to explain what it was that I could actually do for them.
When I started my business, the idea of a virtual CFO in Australia was fairly niche. It's definitely grown a lot in the last 15 years, but yeah, back then it was hard to explain exactly what it was that I was going to do [00:06:00] until I started doing it. So when I talk about you as the expert on the discovery call, what we wanna do is we want to ideally give them an agenda at the start of the call.
This idea comes from Julia Hewitt. Thanks, legend. We wanna set the person up for, we wanna give them an idea of what it is that they're here to do. This will also stop people from picking your brain. Now, this idea that people book calls to pick our brain. I challenge that idea. A lot of people are scared to make discovery calls available on their website because they're worried that they're all of a sudden gonna have this influx of people looking for free advice.
That is not my experience of what is going to happen. And it's really important that you set the person up from the start to understand that this is a sales call, not a coaching or [00:07:00] advisory call. Now, that's not to say that you can't give them a few tidbits of advice or recommendations on the call.
Absolutely. But that is not the main point of the call. So we wanna start by getting the person on the call really feeling comfortable with what is about to happen. A lot of people will be feeling very anxious at the start of a discovery call, so we want to help them to be able to relax into the experience with us.
We wanna get them talking as much as we can, so we wanna understand what is the problem they're facing or what is the goal that they are trying to achieve.
We wanna get the person on the call talking about the problem, the challenge. What it's costing them. Ideally, you wanna get them to explain what they've tried in the past that hasn't worked, and you wanna make sure you're doing a really great job of paraphrasing back to them what you have understood.
You really wanna make sure that that person on the other end of the call feels really seen and heard. The best way to clarify that you have understood them is to ask them, this is what I heard. Have I understood that correctly? [00:09:00] You wanna make sure that on that call, you are able to make a recommendation about how you can best help them.
This is why I love my clients to have packages or productized services because. If you are a service provider who is constantly offering bespoke quotes and proposals, not only does that take you a huge amount of time to be able to do custom quotes for every single client. But it also means that that client leaves the discovery call without understanding what is going to happen next.
So what we wanna do, rather than asking our client what exactly is it that you want to do for me, what we wanna do instead is understand what their goals are. What would it look like if this went the way that you wanted it to? Are you looking to maintain your market position or are you looking to grow your [00:10:00] revenue by 20%?
For example, we wanna get really clear about what the client's goal is in the area that we are talking about, and then you can make a recommendation based on what I've heard and what your goals are, this particular option is the most suitable. And let me give you a couple of reasons why. I recommend that that is the way to go.
This is you positioning yourself as the expert in your domain, and it's really important to remember that you are the expert about how to solve your client's problem. The reason they have come to you is because they're looking for you to actually deliver a solution or a desire or a goal to them. Now, sometimes our clients do know how to do the work that they're trying to outsource to us.
We are still the expert in how to deliver that solution to them. So that is why I love my clients to have packages [00:11:00] pre-developed. And ideally, we wanna actually share those packages on our website or before the discovery call actually happens. This again was inspired partly by Julia Hewitt legend. We actually wanna ask for objections on the call.
We wanna get our client to say out loud the reasons why they may not be able to go ahead. Is there anything that would stop you from being able to book in next week? If so, let's talk about it. And what we wanna do is give them the opportunity to say out loud all of the reasons why they're feeling hesitant.
Unsure or uncertain or what are their kind of objections to being able to move forward? And we want them to be able to say all of them out loud without you interjecting or interrupting. Once you have got them to say out loud all of their objections, then you [00:12:00] can calmly and happily run through your kind of, uh, advice or thoughts about each of those things.
Okay. So I think that's a really good starting point for thinking about how to actually run discovery calls that are much more likely to get you to a yes than perhaps how you are doing them now. So the discovery call starts long before the call. We want to make sure that we have. Brought the right clients in that we have researched that client, that we've asked them some relevant questions that will help guide the discovery call.
Ideally, we already have packages that we can recommend on the call and then we can clarify later, and we've actually asked the person on the call. To let us know anything that might stop them from going ahead so that you can tackle that together rather than it feeling like something that they're not able [00:13:00] to share with you because it feels too awkward.
A couple of last thoughts around discovery calls. So discovery calls are a research tool. Don't be afraid of too many people booking them because they won't. And also we wanna think about the fact that phone calls are relationship building exercises and you just never know where they'll lead. So don't go into your discovery calls feeling like the only potential outcome that you are looking for is that this person is going to become a client immediately.
What we want is to build a relationship with that person so that it can go in whatever direction it needs to go. Sometimes you'll have somebody on the call that is not the right fit for your services, and it doesn't mean that it wasn't a valuable use of your time. As long as you handle that in a really professional and helpful way, and that might be letting the person know, Hey, I really [00:14:00] love your business.
I've really enjoyed getting to know you. I don't think that I'm the right person to help you, but would you like me to recommend somebody who might be? And that means that you've managed to keep that relationship moving and you just never know where that might go in the future. Also you wanna think about listening to how the people that book discovery calls, a lot of people call them leads.
How your leads talk about the problems that they're experiencing or the goals that they have. What are the words that they use? Are multiple leads using similar words? If so, we want to start using those words in your marketing, on your website and in your social media. I really hope that was a helpful conversation about how to make your discovery calls better.
And if you go to the show notes of this episode, you are going to [00:15:00] see a link to the Sales Sprint workbook, which is gonna help you work through these topics yourself. And I will see you next week when we'll be talking about how to make your proposals awesome.
Outro
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners. If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it if you subscribe to the podcast, but leave us a review or share this episode with one of your friends. I hope you learned something. I hope you got a new perspective and I really hope you enjoyed the listening experience.
