The Discovery Call Is a Filter, Not a Pitch

You get on a discovery call and immediately start explaining what you do. How you work. What’s possible with Squarespace. Your process, your timeline, your philosophy. It’s like giving a presentation to an audience of one.

By the end of the call, they say something like, “This all sounds great, let me think about it,” and hang up.

You performed. They observed.

And you’re left wondering: Did they like me? Are they serious? What are they actually thinking about?

Here’s the thing -

They already discovered you. They read your site. They followed your work. They booked the call. That part’s done. The discovery call isn’t for them to discover you. It’s for you to discover them. And not just their tech needs or timelines.

What you really want to know is:

– What made this feel urgent right now?
– What happens if they don’t solve this?
– What have they already tried and why didn’t it work?
– Who’s actually making the decision?
– What are they prepared to invest?

But most designers never extract any of this.

They’re too busy auditioning to win the project. When you stop performing and start probing, the whole dynamic flips.

You stop attracting people who need to be convinced. You start attracting people who need to be qualified. Now the call becomes a filter — not a pitch.

You’re not proving you’re good enough. You’re checking whether they’re ready.

And here’s the wild part: when someone gets on a call with you and the first thing you ask is, “So what made this feel urgent this week?” — you can feel the shift. They lean in. You lean back. People who aren’t ready will feel it — and they’ll quietly disappear. People who are ready will finally feel like someone gets it.

Of course, knowing you should ask better questions is one thing. Knowing which ones, in what order, how to ask them without sounding like an interrogator — that’s a whole other skill.

There’s a difference between asking, “What’s your budget?” and asking, “What were you expecting to invest in this?” You can feel the difference. But without a full framework, it’s hard to build the call in a way that flows. You know when a call goes sideways — but you can’t rewind it in real time?

This is not uncommon; it simply means you’re missing a protocol.

Now imagine you had that protocol. Imagine getting off every call knowing exactly where you stand — yes, no, or not yet.

Imagine never wondering, “What are they thinking?” because you already asked.

Imagine the people who aren’t a fit quietly removing themselves before you waste a proposal.

That’s what extraction does. It doesn’t make you a better closer. It makes you a better filter.

And if this clicked for you, but you don’t yet have the questions, the flow, or the system to actually do this — I got you.

You can steal my free Discovery Call Script — the exact one I use (and teach my clients to use) to qualify faster, close cleaner, and stop wasting time on “maybe” projects.

👉 Download the script here