Welcome to issue 63! Did someone forward this to you? If so, Subscribe here!

Last weekend I was driving to an event with my wife's family.

GPS said turn left. I turned left.

My father-in-law, riding shotgun, said: "If you had stayed straight, that's actually a shortcut."

A minute later he pointed to the road we just passed.

"That's where you would've come out. Google Maps doesn't always pick that up."

He wasn't wrong.

Although we got there fine, it stuck with me on the drive home.

I had the answer sitting right next to me. I ignored it because I was too committed to following instructions.

→ Sound familiar?

Because that's exactly what's happening on your sales calls.

You show up with your question list. You've done the work. You're prepared.

And then you spend the whole call so focused on getting to question #4 that you miss the thing your buyer just handed you in question #2.

They drop something important and you completely gloss over it and move on.

The call ends and you think it went well.

But you walked away without knowing half of what you actually needed to know.

And it's killing the deals you should be winning.

I want to be clear about something before we go further.

You should have structure on every call. A framework. A flow. Questions that help you qualify.

→ I'm not telling you to throw the list out.

I'm telling you that the founders who struggle most on calls aren't the ones without a list. They're the ones who grip it too tight.

The best sellers I've worked with know their questions cold. Not because they're reading them. Because they've internalized them well enough to put them down.

And when they put the checklist down, something changes. Their eyes stay on the buyer. Their ears open up. They stop navigating and start listening.

That's the difference between running a call and having a conversation.

In Gotham, the “Bat Signal” doesn't go up every hour.

But when it does, Batman doesn't ignore it. He stops. He takes action.

Your buyers are sending up signals on every single call. Most founders miss them because they're already thinking about the next question.

Here are the five signals you need to be watching for:

Any time your buyer mentions one of these, directly or in passing, that's the signal going up.

You stop. You don't move on.

You follow it.

Here's an example of a signal that I heard on a recent sales call roast.

The buyer expanded on the surface-level question asked and says:

"You’re the first one we have looked at. This was a priority for Q2 but that's shifted slightly."

Read that again.

The Bat Signal is shining bright. Signals everywhere.

But, the sales rep just moved on asking zero follow-up questions.

Before you move on:

→ What questions would you have asked in this situation?

→ What seems so obvious to explore?

That one “throwaway line” just told us so much but, without pulling on that thread, we don’t know how serious, fixable or competitive this process will be.

We don’t know anything.

The moment money comes up, even casually, stop.

I've said it before: I'd rather lose a deal in the first 26 minutes than agonize over it for weeks.

If they mention a number, a constraint, or that they're "still figuring that out," that's your signal.

Don't wait for a better moment to ask these questions. There isn't one.

This one is sneaky because it doesn't always sound like a signal.

A buyer says, "I'd have to run this by my team." Or mentions a name you've never heard before. That's the signal.

The person on the call is not always the person who decides.

If you don't know who else is in the room, you don't know where the deal actually stands. You might be building a great relationship with someone who can't say yes.

Discovery is about discovering. Get good at picking up the signal and learning more.

Not a summary. Mirror back to them.

"Hold on, you mentioned this shifted from Q2. Can you help me understand what changed?"

That single move does two things. It shows them you were actually listening. And it gives them permission to tell you the real story.

Put the list down. Stay with it. One more question. Then, another if it opens up.

You should be able to go a few levels deeper before you move on. If you can't, you left something on the table.

ICYMI: 12 Discovery Questions To Take Discovery To The Next Level

Sometimes a signal surfaces mid-call and the timing isn't right to go deep on it. Make a note. Flag it mentally.

Before you wrap up, go back.

"Earlier you mentioned the timeline shifted. I want to make sure we address that before we end."

Nothing gets left behind.

And the buyer notices that you caught it.

I’ll just lay it out there.

A lot of discovery calls feel productive and produce nothing.

You asked your questions. They answered. You set a next step.

But did you actually learn anything that changes how you approach this deal? Do you know what's really going on?

Or did you just navigate turn-by-turn and miss the shortcut the whole time?

Your question list is Google Maps. It'll get you to the general area.

But the local knowledge, the real insight, the thing that separates a deal you understand from a deal you're guessing at, that comes from following the buyer when they signal.

They're pointing at the road the whole time.

You just have to look up.

On your next call, don't try to change everything at once.

Pick one signal. Just one.

Budget. Timeline. Need. Evaluation Process. Decision Makers.

Listen for it.

When it surfaces, and it will, stop. Don't move to the next question.

→ Ask one follow-up and see where it goes.

Do that consistently and your calls will start producing something they probably haven't been producing enough of.

Clarity.

Where do you get stuck most on your calls? Hit reply and let me know.