Discovery calls 

or 'qualification calls' as they're often known in the Odoo world – are crucial for a successful sales cycle. Furthermore, when done well, they significantly boost client satisfaction and help reduce churn.

As a partnership advisor at @Odoo, a good qualification had a direct correlation with partner success, time to market and scaling.

Why am I covering this? Personal experience. In my role as a Partnership Sales Manager (Team Leader) at Odoo, we constantly qualified potential partners (service integrators) – validating their business model, sales capacity, technical knowledge, and more. Often, we also helped them qualify their initial projects; after all, partners frequently approached our team precisely because they had a client request.

The quality of information gathered during these early calls was a consistent friction point – between the Partnership team (focused on acquiring new partners) and the Channel Account Managers (focused on nurturing existing ones), and also between Partnership and the Business Analysts (the consultants implementing the projects).

As proactive team leaders, we decided we needed to solve this information gap.

Solution 1

Standardise Everything

In many businesses facing inconsistency, the first thought is often: "Let's standardise". We asked ourselves: What do we absolutely need to know? How can we ensure we get that information every time?

We gathered requirements from both the Channel and Consultant teams to define the essential information our sales team needed to capture.

The result? The magic "qualification cheat-sheet."

Pre defined questions (cheat sheet) can be useful for guiding the conversation and ensuring key areas are covered, especially for less experienced SDRs who might be new to value selling.

Initially, we were pleased to see all the questions on our new cheat sheet being answered. We may have overlooked, or perhaps were unwilling to admit, that many answers were just short phrases or single words. Still, this standardised communication was initially appreciated by the other teams too. They were getting the specific data points they requested, so why complain? What could go wrong?

Realising that solution 1 wasn't optimal

It didn't take long for the friction to return, this time from all sides. Apparently, simply filling out the sheet meant our discovery calls were missing extremely relevant context:

• Example 1: We nearly underestimated a partner who was part of a small group but had a sister IT company with a highly effective sales team ready to support the go-to-market for their new Odoo business. This crucial structural information significantly changed how a partner manager should approach and support them, but it wasn't a standard question on our sheet.
• Example 2: Project sold but the scope required full revision by the Business Analyst during Kick off meeting. Under qualified - limited understanding of processes.

Figuring out what solution 2 should be

To figure out what was really happening, what better way than to shadow some sales calls?

I joined a call with a salesperson who had solid product knowledge and experience. After a quick ice breaker, she pulled up the qualification cheat sheet. She started with an open-ended question: "Tell me about your business."

The prospect responded, "I've been doing IT services for 5 years, working with Technology X and Technology Y. We bumped into Odoo while talking to people in the industry. We feel our current service portfolio is maybe outdated or getting too expensive."

Okay, great start! But then the salesperson immediately asked, "And how many staff?"

The prospect looked puzzled: "...Eight, plus a few contractors depending on workload."

Salesperson: "How many technical, how many functional?"

She lost him.

The prospect had begun to open up about his current situation, his business approach, and crucially, the reason he was looking for something new (an integrator typically looks for a new solution because a client asks, or because their current offering isn't working well).

Instead of drilling down on this potential pain point ("Why do you feel your portfolio is outdated? What challenges does that cause?"), she moved directly to question 2, then question 3, following the sheet almost like an interrogation. Her primary goal seemed to be filling the document efficiently to move to the next prospect. She was ticking boxes!

Ironically, the very first call I shadowed immediately highlighted the problem. Our sales team, focused on the checklist, was missing huge opportunities to truly qualify and connect.

Understanding the story

By continuing the initial conversation, allowing (or even guiding) the prospect through why he felt his offer was outdated, what objections he faced, if he’d tried other technologies – that would have provided the context needed. Identifying the core pain point allows the salesperson to gently guide the conversation in that direction.

That deeper understanding would have enabled her to present a value proposition tailored specifically to his challenges, making the Odoo partnership offer much more compelling.

Instead, she followed the sheet. Question 2, 3, 4... down the list. From that point on, the prospect's answers became short and disengaged: "Yes," "No," "10," "6 months."

To be clear, it wasn't entirely her fault. We, as managers, had emphasized that completing the questionnaire was key for a smooth internal handover. As Warren Buffet says, "Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome." The intention was efficiency, but the outcome was superficial understanding.

Solution 2: From Checklists to Conversations & Descriptive Reports

We realized the cheat sheet, while well-intentioned, was hindering rather than helping. The solution? Move away from checklists and towards descriptive reports.

We provided training in better business writing. We emphasised that a sales cycle follows a story. It's that story – about the prospect's business model, processes, problems, bottlenecks, and even the personalities of the key players involved – that makes for the best possible handover.

These narrative reports gave invaluable context to the Channel team, enabling a faster, smoother pickup and starting the relationship on a much better footing. They also equipped the Business Analysts with the background needed to scope projects accurately from the start.

The results were tangible: We observed that partners whose salespeople conducted thorough, narrative-driven discovery calls scaled 30-40% faster, advancing through partnership tiers (from Ready to Silver or Gold) more quickly.

AI notetaker - Game changer

Creating these detailed, narrative reports used to be time-consuming. Back then, I spent hours honing my typing skills just to keep up during calls! If only I had the AI meeting note-takers available today.

Tools like these can transcribe and summarize calls, freeing you up to actually listen and engage, rather than frantically typing. (One tool I’ve found helpful is Leexi AI, which integrates with Odoo allowing you to add notes directly to the CRM chatter.

Benefits:

• Focus entirely on the prospect and the conversation flow.
• Easily review call sections later (e.g., discovery, pricing discussions) to refine your approach or clarify details.
• Discover patterns in your pitches and the prospect's responses.
• Automatically push notes into your CRM, ensuring valuable information isn't lost.

Takeaways

How can you improve your discovery calls?

• Talk with your prospects, don't just talk at them. Aim for a genuine conversation.
• Use open-ended questions to let the prospect lead the conversation initially.
• Listen actively. When you sense a pain point or an interesting thread, explore it further instead of just moving to the next question on your list.
• Remember Value Selling isn't just the final pitch. It's about providing guidance and expertise throughout the process, leading the prospect towards a solution – ideally one whose benefits (in hours, money, or efficiency) can be quantified. (I plan to cover this more in an upcoming video!)
• Structure your notes as a story. Clear, descriptive writing is incredibly helpful for internal alignment and ensures context isn't lost.

Happy selling!

I specialise in training and onboarding sales teams for Odoo Partners. If your team could benefit from improving their discovery and qualification process, feel free to reach out via LinkedIn, email, whatsapp, smoke signal, morse code, etc...