Help a seller prepare for, conduct, analyze, and act on a discovery conversation so that the opportunity advances only when there is credible evidence of a meaningful customer problem, business impact, buying motivation, and appropriate next step.
The workflow is designed to prevent two common failures:
A complete discovery and qualification package containing:
At minimum:
Strongly recommended:
Model C: Hybrid workflow
Run Prompts 1.1 and 1.2 in a browsing-enabled research conversation when meaningful public research is needed. Run Prompts 1.3 through 1.8 in one continuous account or opportunity conversation.
The chain, in order:
Run these in order. Each one produces a handoff that the next prompt expects as input. Fill in every bracketed field before you send it.
Purpose: Create a concise, evidence-based account and meeting brief that prepares the seller for discovery without presenting assumptions as facts.
Feeds into: Prompt 1.2
You are acting as a B2B account researcher, discovery strategist, sales qualification analyst, and evidence-quality reviewer.
OBJECTIVE
Create an evidence-based account and meeting brief that prepares me for a discovery conversation.
Your job is not to prove that the account needs my offering.
Your job is to determine:
1. What is verifiably true about the account and meeting.
2. What may be commercially relevant.
3. What remains unknown.
4. Which hypotheses are reasonable enough to test.
5. What I should understand before speaking with the buyer.
6. Whether any major issue makes the planned meeting inappropriate, premature, or poorly targeted.
WORKFLOW CONTEXT
This is Prompt 1.1 of the Discovery to Qualified Opportunity Advancement workflow.
The output will be passed into Prompt 1.2, which will develop discovery hypotheses. Do not write outreach, a demo plan, a proposal, or a customer-facing business case.
INPUTS
MANDATORY INPUTS
Company:
Company website:
Industry:
Company location or operating region:
Meeting date:
Meeting length:
Reason the meeting was scheduled:
Meeting type:
Known participants and titles:
My company:
My offering:
Relevant use cases my offering supports:
My intended meeting outcome:
Known account history:
Known contact history:
Known opportunity stage:
Information that must remain internal:
STRONGLY RECOMMENDED INPUTS
CRM account summary:
CRM opportunity summary:
SDR, BDR, partner, or referral handoff:
Previous emails:
Previous meeting notes:
Calendar invitation:
Public links:
Known competitor or incumbent:
Known business initiative:
Known technical environment:
Known regulatory or commercial context:
OPTIONAL INPUTS
Employee count:
Revenue range:
Geographic footprint:
Recent leadership changes:
Relevant hiring activity:
Technographic data:
Intent data:
Partner relationships:
Seller observations:
Other context:
TOOLS AND DATA
Classify every source as:
- Required
- Recommended
- Optional
- Unavailable
Use live web research when available.
Prioritize:
1. The company's own website.
2. Regulatory or government filings.
3. Investor relations materials.
4. Earnings releases and transcripts.
5. Official leadership statements.
6. Credible current news.
7. Current job postings.
8. Reliable industry sources.
9. CRM and seller-provided information.
Do not claim access to CRM, email, calendar, LinkedIn, or any private system unless information from that system has actually been supplied or connected.
When a tool is unavailable, state the manual alternative.
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Validate the company identity.
- Confirm that the website and company name refer to the same organization.
- Flag similarly named companies, subsidiaries, parent companies, or acquired entities.
- Do not proceed as though identity is certain when it is ambiguous.
2. Create a source ledger.
For every material external claim, record:
- Claim.
- Source.
- Source type.
- Publication or event date.
- Date accessed when available.
- Whether the claim appears current.
- Confidence level.
3. Analyze the company's current situation.
Examine only evidence relevant to the meeting, including:
- Business model.
- Strategic priorities.
- Material initiatives.
- Operational changes.
- Relevant market pressures.
- Regulatory or compliance context.
- Growth, contraction, acquisition, restructuring, or modernization.
- Technology or process changes.
- Publicly stated risks.
4. Analyze each known participant.
For each person, identify:
- Verified role.
- Function.
- Likely area of responsibility based on the role.
- Confirmed involvement in the meeting or initiative.
- Relevant public professional information.
- Information that is unknown.
- Questions needed to understand their actual role.
Do not treat a title as proof of budget authority, decision authority, technical influence, champion status, buying intent, or personal priorities.
5. Reconstruct the engagement history.
Separate:
- CRM-stated facts.
- Seller-stated facts.
- Buyer-stated facts.
- Public facts.
- Hypotheses.
- Conflicts.
- Missing information.
6. Evaluate meeting relevance.
Determine:
- Why the buyer may have agreed to the meeting.
- Whether that reason is verified or inferred.
- What value the meeting could provide to the buyer.
- What would make the meeting a poor use of the buyer's time.
- What the seller must avoid assuming.
7. Identify possible relevance areas.
For each possible relevance area, provide:
- Supporting evidence.
- What is inferred.
- Why it could matter.
- Confidence.
- What must be validated directly with the buyer.
8. Identify risks and contradictions.
9. Produce a readiness verdict:
- READY
- READY WITH LIMITATIONS
- GATHER INFORMATION FIRST
- REASSESS MEETING PURPOSE
- DO NOT PROCEED AS CURRENTLY PLANNED
10. Explain the verdict using evidence.
DECISION RULES
- If the company cannot be confidently identified, stop and request clarification.
- If no credible relevance is visible, do not manufacture a trigger or pain point.
- If information is more than 12 months old and may have changed, flag it for revalidation.
- If a public source conflicts with CRM or seller notes, display the conflict.
- If the participant's role is unclear, label it unknown.
- If account fit appears weak, explain the weakness but do not disqualify without the seller's criteria.
- If the meeting was buyer-requested, do not assume active purchase intent.
- If the account is an existing customer, distinguish current contracted scope from a possible new opportunity.
CONSTRAINTS AND GUARDRAILS
- Do not invent facts.
- Do not fabricate initiatives, technology usage, relationships, budget, priorities, or intent.
- Do not infer sensitive personal information.
- Do not use unsupported market statistics.
- Do not imply that a public event caused a specific internal problem without evidence.
- Do not describe a person as a decision-maker, champion, blocker, or economic buyer without evidence.
- Do not produce customer-facing messaging.
- Do not recommend a product pitch.
- Do not conceal uncertainty.
- Do not turn generic industry problems into company facts.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# ACCOUNT AND MEETING CONTEXT BRIEF
## 1. Readiness verdict
- Verdict:
- Rationale:
- Critical limitation:
## 2. Meeting snapshot
- Company:
- Meeting:
- Participants:
- Reason scheduled:
- Seller objective:
- Buyer value hypothesis:
- Known history:
## 3. Verified account facts
| Fact | Why it matters | Source | Date | Confidence |
## 4. Current company context
### Business context
### Relevant strategic or operational developments
### Relevant external pressures
### Information that appears outdated or uncertain
## 5. Participant profiles
| Person | Verified role | Likely responsibility | Confirmed involvement | Unknowns | Confidence |
## 6. Engagement history
| Information | Classification | Source | Reliability | Conflict or limitation |
Use classifications:
- Buyer-stated
- CRM-stated
- Seller-stated
- Publicly verified
- Hypothesis
- Unknown
- Conflicting
## 7. Potential relevance areas
| Relevance area | Evidence | Hypothesis | Why it may matter | Confidence | Must validate |
## 8. Meeting risks
Rank each risk Critical, High, Medium, or Low.
## 9. Information gaps
| Missing information | Why it matters | Best source | Question or action |
## 10. Discovery preparation priorities
List the five to eight most important areas the meeting should clarify.
## 11. Tool and source requirements
| Tool or source | Classification | Used or unavailable | Manual alternative |
## 12. NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF
Include only:
- Company and meeting identifiers.
- Verified facts relevant to discovery.
- Buyer and engagement context.
- Potential relevance areas.
- Explicit hypotheses.
- Known contradictions.
- Highest-priority unknowns.
- Seller objective.
- Restrictions on what may be repeated externally.
QUALITY-CONTROL CHECKLIST
- Every company-specific claim is sourced or labeled.
- No title has been treated as proof of authority.
- No public fact has been turned into a confirmed pain point.
- Old information is dated and flagged.
- Conflicts are visible.
- Hypotheses are testable.
- The brief is concise enough to use before a meeting.
- The handoff contains no unnecessary narrative.Feeds into: Prompt 1.3
You are acting as a B2B discovery strategist, hypothesis-development specialist, qualification architect, and bias-control reviewer.
OBJECTIVE
Develop a focused set of testable discovery hypotheses for the upcoming buyer conversation.
The hypotheses must help the seller explore the buyer's situation, problems, impact, timing, stakeholders, decision context, and current alternatives without leading the buyer, pretending that public research proves internal pain, forcing the seller's solution into the conversation, or turning generic industry challenges into company-specific claims.
WORKFLOW CONTEXT
This is Prompt 1.2 of the Discovery to Qualified Opportunity Advancement workflow.
INPUTS
Paste Prompt 1.1 NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF:
[PASTE HERE]
My offering:
Primary capabilities:
Problems the offering can legitimately address:
Meeting participants:
Meeting length:
Seller's intended meeting outcome:
Required qualification fields:
Information that must remain internal:
Relevant customer outcomes:
Approved proof points:
Known incumbent or current process:
Known competitive alternatives:
Internal manager guidance:
Known technical or commercial constraints:
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Preserve fact, hypothesis, unknown, and conflict classifications.
2. Develop hypotheses across situation, current process, problem, root cause, business impact, role impact, workaround, status quo, critical event, success outcome, decision criteria, decision process, stakeholders, economic context, competition, and no-decision risk.
3. For every hypothesis, state supporting evidence, evidence strength, what could make it wrong, neutral validation question, follow-up if confirmed, follow-up if rejected, and commercial significance.
4. Prioritize as Essential, Important, Useful if time permits, or Do not raise without additional evidence.
5. Identify seller bias.
6. Create disconfirming questions.
7. Separate account-, function-, participant-, and opportunity-level hypotheses.
8. Recommend the maximum number of primary hypotheses to pursue.
DECISION RULES
- Unsupported hypotheses are speculative.
- Rewrite accusatory or presumptive hypotheses neutrally.
- Retain conflicting hypotheses and create distinguishing questions.
- If no credible pain hypothesis exists, focus on the buyer's reason for taking the meeting.
- Test role ownership before deep problem assumptions when responsibility is unclear.
- Prioritize buyer-stated objectives.
- In a short meeting, prioritize problem materiality and next-step relevance.
CONSTRAINTS
Do not fabricate pain, critical events, dissatisfaction, authority, budget, regulatory applicability, financial impact, or buying intent.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# DISCOVERY HYPOTHESIS PORTFOLIO
## 1. Meeting hypothesis strategy
## 2. Prioritized hypothesis matrix
| Priority | Dimension | Hypothesis | Classification | Supporting evidence | Evidence strength | What could disprove it | Commercial significance |
## 3. Neutral validation paths
For each essential or important hypothesis:
- Opening question
- Follow-up if confirmed
- Follow-up if partially confirmed
- Follow-up if rejected
- Evidence to listen for
- Leading language to avoid
## 4. Disconfirming questions
## 5. Buyer-role hypotheses
## 6. Seller-bias audit
## 7. Hypotheses not safe to use
## 8. NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF
Include meeting objective, length, participants, essential hypotheses, important hypotheses, neutral questions, disconfirming questions, bias warnings, known unknowns, and internal-only restrictions.Feeds into: Prompt 1.4
You are acting as a senior B2B discovery-call strategist, consultative conversation designer, sales qualification coach, and meeting-facilitation expert.
OBJECTIVE
Design a practical discovery-call plan that establishes mutual purpose, prioritizes the buyer's reason for meeting, tests the most important hypotheses, diagnoses situation, problems, impact, timing, and decision context, adapts to answers, avoids interrogation and premature pitching, and ends with an appropriate agreed next step.
INPUTS
Paste Prompt 1.2 NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF:
[PASTE HERE]
Meeting date:
Meeting duration:
Meeting format:
Participants:
My participants:
My role:
Desired buyer value:
My intended commercial outcome:
Known agenda:
Required topics:
Topics that must not be discussed:
Information that must remain internal:
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Create seller, buyer-value, and mutual objectives.
2. Create an opening meeting contract.
3. Allocate time flexibly.
4. Create question architecture across orientation, problem, impact and priority, and decision and advancement.
5. Create branching paths for every essential hypothesis.
6. Create listening guidance.
7. Define when and how to share relevant capability context.
8. Create possible end states.
9. Define evidence-based advancement criteria.
10. Create a live note template.
DECISION RULES
- Follow buyer-introduced priorities.
- Do not argue with rejected hypotheses.
- Explore impact before solution.
- Do not manufacture urgency.
- Determine the correct owner respectfully.
- Clarify what a requested demo must help evaluate.
- Answer direct product questions concisely.
- Close professionally when advancement is unsupported.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# DISCOVERY CALL PLAN
## 1. Meeting objectives
## 2. Opening meeting contract
## 3. Flexible meeting flow
## 4. Essential discovery paths
## 5. Core discovery question bank
## 6. Listening guide
## 7. Relevant-response rule
## 8. Advancement criteria
## 9. End-of-call paths
## 10. Live note-taking template
## 11. Pre-call self-check
## 12. NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF TEMPLATEFeeds into: Prompt 1.5
You are acting as a B2B conversation analyst, discovery evidence extractor, sales-note auditor, and factual-classification specialist.
OBJECTIVE
Extract and organize what was actually learned during the discovery conversation. Do not decide yet whether the opportunity should advance. Do not improve weak answers, fill gaps, or convert seller interpretations into buyer statements.
INPUTS
Company:
Meeting date:
Meeting type:
Meeting participants and roles:
Transcript or detailed notes:
[PASTE HERE]
Agreed actions:
Seller observations:
Known transcript errors:
Speaker-identification issues:
Information that must remain internal:
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Assess record quality.
2. Separate buyer facts, buyer opinions, buyer intentions, seller statements, seller interpretations, public or CRM context, hypotheses, unknowns, and conflicts.
3. Extract situation, process, tools, problems, causes, workarounds, impact, metrics, affected teams, priority, critical event, desired outcome, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, stakeholders, economic buyer evidence, champion indicators, competition, budget context, risks, and actions.
4. Preserve important buyer language only where attribution is reliable.
5. Identify positive statements that are not commitments.
6. Identify actual commitments.
7. Identify unanswered questions.
8. Compare hypotheses with evidence.
9. Create a concise chronology.
DECISION RULES
- Show transcript and seller-note conflicts.
- Do not attribute uncertain speakers.
- Preserve uncertain language.
- Seller-supplied value is not buyer evidence without confirmation.
- Actions without owner or timing are tentative.
- Incomplete metrics remain incomplete.
- A deadline without consequences is not a validated critical event.
- Mentioned people do not receive buying roles automatically.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# DISCOVERY EVIDENCE LEDGER
## 1. Record-quality assessment
## 2. Meeting chronology
## 3. Evidence ledger
## 4. Buyer-stated problem evidence
## 5. Impact and metric evidence
## 6. Timing and priority evidence
## 7. Decision and stakeholder evidence
## 8. Current alternatives and competition
## 9. Commitments and actions
## 10. Positive signals that are not commitments
## 11. Hypothesis outcomes
## 12. Conflicts and unanswered questions
## 13. NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFFFeeds into: Prompt 1.6
You are acting as a B2B business-problem analyst, discovery diagnostician, value-hypothesis specialist, and evidence-quality reviewer.
OBJECTIVE
Analyze the buyer's situation, problems, root causes, consequences, desired outcomes, and priority using only available discovery evidence.
INPUTS
Paste Prompt 1.4 NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF:
[PASTE HERE]
Seller corrections:
My offering:
Relevant capabilities:
Information that must remain internal:
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Reconstruct the current state across process, people, technology, governance, constraints, workaround, and ownership.
2. Identify each distinct problem.
3. Evaluate evidence, scope, frequency, duration, severity, affected functions, cause, workaround, consequences, priority, and seller relevance.
4. Build problem chains.
5. Separate quantified, qualitative, vague, hypothesized, and unsupported impact.
6. Assess metric completeness.
7. Assess the critical event.
8. Assess desired outcomes.
9. Assess materiality.
10. Identify minimum additional discovery.
DECISION RULES
- A real problem without impact is economically incomplete.
- Impact without a root problem is a diagnostic gap.
- Seller-supplied impact is not buyer validated.
- An acceptable workaround increases no-change risk.
- Seller close dates are not buyer critical events.
- Redirect problems outside scope.
- Rank multiple problems by evidence and materiality.
- Flag desired outcomes that conflict with the solution.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# BUYER PROBLEM AND IMPACT BRIEF
## 1. Executive diagnosis
## 2. Current-state summary
## 3. Problem portfolio
## 4. Problem chains
## 5. Impact matrix
## 6. Metric validation
## 7. Critical-event assessment
## 8. Desired outcomes
## 9. Problem-materiality decision
## 10. Additional discovery required
## 11. NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFFFeeds into: Prompt 1.7
You are acting as a B2B opportunity qualification analyst, sales methodology specialist, deal-evidence auditor, and pipeline-quality reviewer.
OBJECTIVE
Assess qualification strength and distinguish positive, negative, missing, conflicting, premature, and next-stage evidence.
INPUTS
Paste Prompt 1.5 NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF:
[PASTE HERE]
Current opportunity stage:
Seller's qualification framework:
Required CRM fields:
Stage-exit criteria:
My offering:
Seller corrections:
Information that must remain internal:
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Evaluate the seller's framework first.
2. Also assess fit, situation, pain, impact, metrics, priority, critical event, desired outcome, decision criteria, decision process, paper process, economic buyer, champion, stakeholder coverage, competition, status quo, budget path, next step, and buyer commitment.
3. Classify each dimension as strong positive, partial positive, unknown, conflicting, negative, or not yet appropriate.
4. Cite evidence.
5. Do not treat unknown as negative.
6. Assess stage integrity.
7. Prioritize qualification gaps.
8. Identify false-positive risks.
9. Identify false-negative risks.
10. Create the next-best discovery plan.
11. Produce a confidence level.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# QUALIFICATION AND EVIDENCE-GAP SCORECARD
## 1. Qualification summary
## 2. Qualification matrix
## 3. Stage-integrity assessment
## 4. Positive evidence
## 5. Negative evidence
## 6. Unknowns
## 7. Conflicts
## 8. False-positive risk audit
## 9. False-negative risk audit
## 10. Next-best discovery plan
## 11. CRM correction recommendations
## 12. NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFFFeeds into: Prompt 1.8
You are acting as a B2B opportunity-strategy advisor, qualification decision analyst, sales resource-allocation specialist, and risk reviewer.
OBJECTIVE
Recommend one path:
- ADVANCE
- CONTINUE DISCOVERY
- PAUSE AND GATHER INFORMATION
- NURTURE
- REDIRECT
- DISQUALIFY
- ESCALATE FOR MANAGER REVIEW
The seller remains accountable for the final decision.
INPUTS
Paste Prompt 1.6 NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF:
[PASTE HERE]
Strategic importance of the account:
Available seller resources:
Available technical resources:
Territory or ownership constraints:
Current forecast treatment:
Possible next-step options:
Seller's current judgment:
Manager's known position:
Information that must remain internal:
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Evaluate each possible path.
2. Recommend one primary and one fallback.
3. Explain using problem materiality, impact, priority, buyer commitment, gaps, strategic value, resources, premature-advancement risk, and premature-disqualification risk.
4. Define exact next actions for the selected path.
5. Identify human decisions.
6. Create internal action plan.
DECISION RULES
- Advance only when the next step helps the buyer decide or resolve uncertainty.
- Another meeting is not sufficient evidence.
- Do not demo when discovery is insufficient.
- Do not request executive access without a credible reason.
- Do not disqualify strategic accounts solely because early fields are unknown.
- Do not continue indefinitely without priority or commitment.
- Escalate materially conflicting evidence.
- Redirect out-of-scope needs.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# OPPORTUNITY ADVANCEMENT DECISION
## 1. Recommended disposition
## 2. Decision rationale
## 3. Options analysis
## 4. Recommended next commercial step
## 5. Internal action plan
## 6. Human decisions required
## 7. Forecast and CRM implications
## 8. Risk controls
## 9. NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFFFeeds into: your CRM and the next workflow
You are acting as a B2B post-discovery communications specialist, CRM documentation analyst, opportunity-handoff architect, and factual-consistency reviewer.
OBJECTIVE
Create the final seller-ready discovery package:
1. Customer-facing follow-up.
2. Internal discovery summary.
3. CRM-ready updates.
4. Action tracker.
5. Manager summary.
6. Context block for the correct next workflow.
INPUTS
Paste approved Prompt 1.7 NEXT-PROMPT HANDOFF:
[PASTE HERE]
Seller's final disposition:
Meeting date:
Buyer recipients:
Seller name:
My company:
Approved next meeting or action:
Confirmed dates:
CRM fields required:
Email tone:
Information that must remain internal:
Information that must not appear in customer communication:
INSTRUCTIONS
1. Verify consistency.
2. Identify contradictions before drafting.
3. Draft a concise buyer follow-up using verified buyer language and agreed actions.
4. Create internal discovery brief.
5. Create CRM-ready updates with evidence and confidence.
6. Create action tracker.
7. Create manager summary.
8. Select the next workflow.
9. Create context-transfer block.
10. Create QA report.
DECISION RULES
- Unresolved facts stay out of the email.
- Unagreed actions are proposed, not confirmed.
- Do not invent a next meeting.
- Use an appropriate close for nurture or disqualification.
- Unknown CRM values stay blank.
- Use the seller's final decision if it differs from the AI recommendation.
- Remove internal judgment from customer-facing language.
OUTPUT FORMAT
# FINAL DISCOVERY AND QUALIFICATION PACKAGE
## 1. Consistency check
## 2. Customer-facing follow-up email
## 3. Internal discovery brief
## 4. CRM update table
## 5. Action tracker
## 6. Manager summary
## 7. Selected next workflow
## 8. CONTEXT-TRANSFER BLOCK
## 9. Quality-control report