Starting a web development company can be quite a task. You get to work with clients of all sizes, backgrounds, and requirements. You need to have a process to qualify clients and to do that you need to ask the right discovery questions.

Too often, agency owners let clients explain their needs and blindly agree without truly understanding what they’re signing up for. This ultimately results in scope creep, missed deadlines and costs your mental health.

To avoid that, here are some discovery questions for your first call that will help you qualify potential clients like a pro:

Questions that set the stage

• Tell me about your company.
• Tell me about your role. What do you do day-to-day?
• Who is your customer?

Understand the problem

• What are you trying to accomplish?
• What is the reason you want a new (website/service)?
• What’s getting in the way of you achieving this goal?

Dig deeper

• Why now?
• Why do you want/need this?
• How do you feel about (problem/goal)?
• If you had (goal), what would that mean for you and your business?
• What level of value do you want from a new website? E.g. High, Just need the website…
• What is the lifetime value of one average customer?
• What are the users’ needs, goals and expectations?
• What action do you want customers to take while on your website?
• Why me/our agency?
• Why you don’t like your current (agency/developer)? 

Establish next steps

• How much time do you have to commit to this project per week?
• When we work together what would a home run look like?
• What deliverables are required to consider this project a success?
• Who will be managing the website and handling content updates after the handover?
• Do you want to add Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel and Search Console to the website?

You need to get inside the head of your client and relate to them.

You need to understand what they have now and what they wanna achieve between now and their goal.

You need to show yourself as the subject matter expert and earn their trust.

After understanding what will provide the highest value to your clients you can curate your best offer around it.

Tip: You need to listen more and stop talking after you asked a question. This might feel awkward but you will get the most interesting answers. You can then use their words back to them to show how you are going to solve their problems.