About three focused hours. Read the lesson, do the drills out loud, print the worksheet, complete it, and turn it in to your manager. When you're done for the day, click Mark this day complete at the bottom.
Watch the Day 7 video in our Rippling LMS before you work through the lesson below. You'll be prompted to sign in with your Rippling account. The video opens in a new tab.
▶ Watch Day 7 video in Rippling
Editors: click the button above while in edit mode to change the video link.
Goal: run a great first call, qualify deeper, and never leave without the next meeting booked.
The first meeting is discovery, not a pitch. Your job is to ask, listen, and diagnose — like a doctor before a prescription. The rep who listens 70% of the time and talks 30% wins. Use our Discovery Call Flow tool as your guide, and build a question bank you’re comfortable with.
Open & set the agenda: “Thanks for the time. I’d love to learn about your business and your goals, share a couple of ideas, and if it makes sense, talk about next steps. Fair?”
Situation: how do customers find them today? What’s working, what isn’t?
Pain & cost: where are they losing leads or time? What does that cost them?
Goal: what would growth look like in the next 6–12 months?
Decision: who else weighs in, and what’s their timeline?
Bridge: “Based on what you’ve told me, I have a clear idea. Let’s book time for me to walk you through exactly how it would work.”
Both can win. They require different skills.
| Great PHONE call | Great ZOOM call | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | Your voice is everything — smile, stand up, vary your tone. Higher energy than feels natural. | Camera on, good light, eyes to the lens. Warm and present, slightly calmer than phone. |
| Pacing | Slower. Pause often. Let silence do work after questions. | Natural conversation; watch their face for cues and adjust. |
| Tools | Have your notes and questions in front of you; they can’t see you read. | Share screen for the Builder / examples — show, don’t just tell. |
| Trust | Built purely through listening and relevance. | Built through eye contact, screen-sharing, and reading body language. |
| Risk | Easy to be forgotten — you MUST lock the next step. | Easy to over-talk the slides — keep them talking. |
What to do differently: On the phone, over-index on voice energy and listening, slow down, and confirm everything verbally because there are no visual cues. On Zoom, get the camera on, use screen-share to make it visual, watch their reactions, and resist the urge to lecture the slides. On both, your discovery questions are the same — the delivery changes, not the diagnosis.
This is the habit that will make your career: never end a meeting without the next one booked. Dohrn calls getting ghosted a self-inflicted wound — it happens when we leave the next step vague.
Assume the next step: “The natural next step is for me to build this and walk you through it. I’ve got Thursday at 10 or Friday at 2 — which is better?”
Book it live: put it on both calendars before you end the call. Send the invite while you’re still together.
Confirm the why: “On Thursday I’ll show you exactly how this gets you [their goal].”
Summarize in writing: send a short recap within the hour — what you heard, the next step, the time.
Print the worksheet, fill it out (by hand or in your PDF viewer), and turn it in to your manager. Then mark this day complete below.