Guide

Metrics and go-to-market

Sales discovery

A discovery call is a structured interview, not a demo. BANT and MEDDIC tell you whether a real deal can exist.

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A discovery call is not a demo. It is a structured interview to see whether a real deal can exist. Qualify before you spend the week on slides.

Two common checklists:

BANT (classic, still useful early)

  • Budget — is there money, or a path to money?
  • Authority — are you talking to someone who can say yes, or a champion who can reach them?
  • Need — is the pain acute, not theoretical?
  • Timeline — is there a reason to decide soon (renewal, launch, board goal, incident)?

MEDDIC (heavier enterprise)

  • Metrics — quantifiable success criteria
  • Economic buyer — who signs
  • Decision criteria — how they will choose
  • Decision process — steps, legal, security
  • Identify pain — forcing function
  • Champion — internal seller with power

Use BANT-level rigor for early mid-market. Graduate to MEDDIC when deals go multi-threaded and six figures.

Example

Weak discovery: "Do you like the product?" → polite yes → endless trial.

Strong discovery: "You said manual reporting costs two FTEs. If we cut that by half, what is that worth annually? Whose budget funds tools in that range? What happens if you do nothing until next fiscal year?"

Now you have a value equation, a budget path and urgency — or you politely disqualify.

Trade-off

Qualify hard and close rate rises while top-of-funnel "opportunities" shrink — correct. Demo everyone and your calendar fills with tourists. Early on, bias to learning (talk to borderline ICP). Once patterns emerge, bias to disqualification.

Concept

Champion vs economic buyer. A champion loves you and lacks budget authority. An economic buyer has budget and is cold on risk. Founder-led deals stall when you only sell to champions. Ask: "Who else needs to be comfortable for this to get signed?" and multi-thread early.

A pipeline is the set of open opportunities with stages, amounts, close dates and next steps. CRM hygiene means every real deal has a next step with a date and owner; stages reflect buyer actions (security review scheduled), not seller hopes; close dates that slip three times get re-qualified or killed. Founders review pipeline weekly. A thin honest pipeline beats a fat fictional one.

Common mistakes

  • Demo-first. You spend the week on tourists.
  • Selling only to the champion. The economic buyer never enters the thread.
  • Stages that mean "we hope they sign."

Check yourself

  1. When do you reach for MEDDIC instead of BANT? When deals are multi-threaded and six figures — decision process, economic buyer and a champion all matter.
  2. A close date has slipped three times. What next? Re-qualify or kill it. Fantasy dates poison the pipeline.

Key takeaways

  • Discovery qualifies budget, authority, need and timeline before the demo.
  • BANT early; MEDDIC when enterprise complexity shows up.
  • Multi-thread to the economic buyer. Champions are not enough.
  • CRM stages should be buyer actions. Honest pipeline beats fat pipeline.

Further learning

After they qualify: pilots and closing.

Founder-led sales

Selling before you have a sales team: discovery calls, pipeline, closing and the first sales hires.

Outbound prospecting

Build a list of ICP accounts, earn a meeting with a short specific message, and treat volume × conversion as the plan.

Pilots and closing

Demo their workflow. Bound the pilot with metrics and a decision date. Ask for the order. Trade term for discount, not naked price cuts.