A CEO thinks in a handful of bets the year rides on and has no time for a pitch that does not connect to one of them. They have declined a hundred vendors who led with features. The ones who get the call open on the growth or efficiency priority the board is holding them to and where the company is capacity-bound against it.
What a CEO actually cares about
A CEO is measured on growth, efficiency, and executing the strategy they sold the board. They buy when something moves a priority they already care about, so relevance to the top one or two bets wins and everything else is noise. Prep around the strategic priority and every answer maps.
Discovery call questions for a CEO
Copy the list and cut it to the six or eight that fit the deal. Lead with the question that gets at the number they own, and let the rest earn their place. Each is tagged with the MEDDICC field it fills, so your notes drop straight into the CRM.
- What are the one or two priorities the whole year rides on? (Metrics)
- Where is the company most capacity-bound against them? (Implicate Pain)
- Walk me through how a decision like this gets made here. (Decision Process)
- What is the growth or efficiency number the board is watching? (Metrics)
- What keeps you from moving faster on it? (Implicate Pain)
- What have you tried that did not move the priority? (Competition)
- What is the cost of this staying unsolved another year? (Implicate Pain)
- Who do you trust to own and evaluate this, and what do they need? (Economic Buyer, Champion)
- What has to be true for this to be worth your attention? (Decision Process)
- A year from now, what result would make this obviously right? (Metrics)
- Which leader would sponsor it internally? (Champion)
Do not run the whole list; a CEO gave you a few minutes, not an hour. Pick five, open on the priority the year rides on, and let the answers pull the rest. The prompt below tailors these to a real account.
Generate these for your exact account
The list is the floor. The call is won by grounding each question in their actual strategy and stage, which you infer from their site, funding, and public statements. That is the prep you skip before a founder call. Hand it to Claude.
You are prepping me for a discovery call with a CEO at {{company}} ({{company URL}}).
First, read their website: what they sell, who they sell to, how they go to market, and any public signals about their priorities right now.
Then take the discovery questions below and, for each one, swap the generic blank for something specific to {{company}} and this CEO's world. Keep every question mapped to its {{MEDDICC}} field. Cut the list to the 8 that best fit this deal, sequence them broad to specific, and flag the ONE question most likely to surface a real gap I can act on.
Use only what you can read or reasonably infer, and mark anything inferred so I do not assert it as fact on the call.
QUESTIONS:
{{paste the list above}}Generate this for any account
- Discovery call prep skill →The Claude skill that tailors this whole list to a specific account and your framework (MEDDICC, BANT, SPICED).
- Sales discovery questions prompt →The copy-paste prompt version, tailored to the deal in front of you.
Frequently asked questions
What should you ask a CEO on a discovery call?
Lead with the one or two priorities the whole year rides on and where the company is capacity-bound against them. A CEO buys when you connect to a bet they already care about, so strategic, outcome-level questions land and feature questions do not. Keep it to five or six and map each answer to a qualification field.
How do you sell to a CEO?
Connect to a priority they have already committed to publicly or to the board, and be brief. CEOs move fast on what advances the top bet and ignore everything else, so relevance and outcomes win over features. Use discovery to confirm the priority and who they would trust to own it, then build to that.