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Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

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

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.

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