Hacker News Reader

Comment by ezekg | Hacker News Reader

I touch on this at the end of the post. It's a short 15m 'discovery call', not a sales call. It's essentially a formality to intro each other, make sure we're human, and move onto email for any further discussion. Essentially, not all enterprises will shoot you a cold email to start the conversation, so this call is to capture those leads, with the end-goal of having all real discussion in email.

tl;dr: some enterprises will bounce if they don't see a 'book a call' button.

View on HN

You seem to be doing this in good faith but honestly, there is no difference between 'Discovery Call" and a "Sales Call". The point is that the customer has to speak with someone first. I do think it is required for enterprise deals but the premise of your post seems to say otherwise.

Yeah, I was annoyed at this too but I think they're differentiating it by having the price already set, and it's just a way for Companies to do the intro dance if they want to. I know my immediate decision-makers at my company wouldn't use a vendor if there was no call.

The call offered here is optional isn't it? You can engage entirely over email for enterprise deals.

There absolutely is a difference between one 15-minute call to see faces vs a pipeline of ten 30- to 60-minute calls discussing requirements, compliance, pricing, billing, onboarding, implementation, and support over the course of 6 months.

Sales calls usually start with a discovery call then move to those later stages in the pipeline though, so you're just calling a sales call by another name.

I think this is being quite pedantic, especially if you've done enterprise sales before.

Well, no, it seems your distinction is what is pedantic, as you are differentiating between discovery calls and sales calls when most would call them one and the same. This in my opinion undermines the point of your article.

Fair enough. The point of #nocalls is to dip out of the dance, not of all communication. :)

You can take it to the extreme, like I did for a long time, or adapt it for yourself.

I just read your other comment [0], this idea makes more sense in that you don't do any future calls, it's more like customer support in terms of helping them answer questions rather than beginning a pipeline.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42725385#42730669

But the entire article is based on the decision to remove "book a call" from the Enterprise pricing.

No, the entire post is around the decision to remove sales calls from the pipeline.

Still, you didn't remove it as you claim in the article. For a potential customer booking a call there's no difference, even if your intention is for it to only be a "discovery call". What did you actually change on the website?

Actually, I did remove it, and it was gone for a long, long time (years). But only recently did I add it back because I discovered through a/b testing that I was losing leads that didn't want to cold email us, so instead of a cold email, they schedule a quick 15m call that takes little to no preparation for on my end. What it's not is a sales call, and it very quickly moves to an email thread. I am very clear that we don't do further calls past the discovery call -- it's all email (or Slack if they want extended support).

So if a potential customer for your Enterprise tier says “sure ezegk I will pay you 6k/mo but only if you do a second call with me to discuss some open questions I had” you will refuse and tell them you will only communicate via email? I find that very hard to believe…

It's a hypothetical, and it has literally never happened. If they're ready to buy, they'll buy. If they need a quick call, ofc I can jump on at that point, but it really depends on what the call is about -- e.g. if they want to know how to do something, email is a better medium for technical topics.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com