You ran the discovery call yourself, like you run most of them. It felt good. They were friendly. They nodded at every slide.

Then they said, "We're just exploring." You smiled and moved on to pricing.

Three weeks later, the thread has gone stale. No reply to the proposal. No reply to the follow-up. 🐬 You replay the call and can't find the moment it went wrong.

Here's the moment. It was the questions an old rule told you to skip.

Those questions are how you stop chasing and start landing deals at the size and price you want.

The habit that kills deals politely

Somewhere along the way, we all picked up that rule. Don't pry. Don't be nosy. Just present.

It sounds respectful. On a discovery call, it's expensive.

Skip the uncomfortable questions and three things happen. You pitch before you know the problem. You accept "just exploring" as an answer. And you never learn what the problem costs them.

So your proposal lands with no number next to it. The price looks big. The buyer has no reason to move this month. 🐯 The deal doesn't die loudly. It just goes quiet, or it shrinks. And each quiet deal costs you another round of chasing, another evening on follow-ups instead of at home.

Nosy is a trait worth reclaiming

Jenny Wood, a former Google executive, wrote Wild Courage (Portfolio, 2025). In it she reclaims nine traits people are told to hide. "Nosy" is one of them.

That idea sparked this series (this is part 3). In sales, the trait you were told to hide is the one that wins discovery calls. Nosy, done well, is curiosity. And curiosity puts you in control of the conversation.

The buyer doesn't want your pitch yet. They want someone curious enough to understand their problem better than they do.

Curious vs. nosy: the one test

Nosy questions extract facts. "How many reps do you have?" "Which CRM are you on?" Their website and LinkedIn answer most of that in five minutes.

Curious questions create insight. The buyer hears their own answer and learns something. 🌴 That's the test: does this question make them think, or just make them recite?

Do the research before the call. Then spend the call on questions only they can answer.

The 3 discovery call questions, in order

These are Steps 2, 3 and 4 of the 8 Steps of the Repeatable Sale. Order matters. Each one earns the right to ask the next.

1. Step 2, Frustration: "What's the frustration? What have you already tried?" This is where buyers open up. The second half matters most. What they tried and dropped tells you what they won't buy again.
2. Step 3, Importance: "How important is this in the context of everything else going on?" Now the problem sits inside their whole week, next to the hiring plan and the board meeting. 🐬 If it doesn't rank, you just saved yourself three meetings.
3. Step 4, Cost of Inaction: "What happens if you do nothing?" Then stop talking. Let the silence sit, even when it feels heavy. Count to five in your head if you have to. The buyer says the consequence out loud, in their own words. You never say it for them.

That third question feels the most nosy. It's also the one buyers remember you for, and the one that changes the price conversation.

What the silence buys you

Picture Daniel. Made-up name, very common founder. He sells a $30,000 consulting engagement.

On his old calls, he presented after ten minutes. Buyers said "send me a proposal." He sent it. Then he chased.

Now he asks Step 4 and waits. A buyer says: "If our two new reps don't ramp, we miss about $400,000 we planned on this year."

Look at the math. Daniel's $30,000 now sits next to the buyer's own $400,000. That's 7.5% of what doing nothing costs. 🐯 Same price. Completely different conversation. That number is theirs to chew on, not yours to prove.

He didn't push. He didn't pitch. He asked, then he was quiet. And for the first time on that call, he was the one leading.

That's control, and it came from a question, not from pressure. The buyer walks themselves to the reason to move, and you hold the frame.

Why "just exploring" is an invitation

When a buyer says "we're just exploring," the old habit says: respect it, back off, send something.

The curious move is one more question. "What made you start exploring now?"

Something happened. A missed quarter. A first sales hire starting. A deal that slipped. 🌴 That something is Step 2, and the buyer just opened the door.

Try it on your next call

Pick one discovery call this week. Research first, so you never ask what you could have looked up.

Then ask the three questions, in order. Frustration. Importance. Cost of Inaction. After the last one, stay quiet longer than feels comfortable.

Write down the buyer's exact words about what doing nothing costs. Those words go into your proposal. 🐬 Your price sits next to their number, not alone on a page. Picture the call ending with a start date on the table, because the buyer said the cost themselves.

You don't have a personality problem. You have a process gap. And process gaps close.

That's what we practice in the Sales Gym: the 8 Steps, in order, with spotters who push you through your sales wall. 2,400+ B2B founders have been through our programs. Control becomes a habit, and the hours you used to spend chasing come back to you. 🐯 That's Sprintlife.

Want the tools and a community of founders working on the same calls? Join Sprint Club, 7 days free: https://www.strategysprints.com

Ready to accelerate now? Book a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/strategysprint/discovery-call

Happy hunting.

Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆