Partner Discovery Call Guide

About This Guide

The Partner Discovery Call Guide helps you conduct structured, consultative conversations with potential partners during initial outreach. Instead of improvising or missing key insights, this guide organizes your discovery call into six essential topics, each with clear learning objectives, suggested questions, and note-taking prompts.

What Makes This Guide Different

Conversational & Consultative

Questions are phrased naturally to create dialogue, not interrogation. You'll sound like a trusted advisor, not a sales rep reading from a script.

Structured Discovery

Six core topics ensure you learn everything needed to qualify the partnership opportunity and plan next steps.

Note-Taking Built In

Each section includes prompts for what to capture, so you document insights in real-time without losing focus.

The Six Discovery Topics

1. Business Context & Goals

What to Learn:

• Partner's current business situation
• Strategic priorities and objectives
• Growth challenges and opportunities

Suggested Questions:

• Tell me about where your business is today and where you're headed?
• What are your top 3-5 priorities this year?
• What's working well? What's not working as well as you'd like?

Note-Taking Prompt: Key priorities, growth targets, pain points

2. Customer Base & Market Position

What to Learn:

• Customer segments and profiles
• Market positioning and differentiation
• Customer acquisition and retention

Suggested Questions:

• Who are your best customers? What do they have in common?
• How do customers typically find you?
• What makes customers choose you over alternatives?

Note-Taking Prompt: Customer profiles, market position, competitive advantages

3. Current Partnership Landscape

What to Learn:

• Existing partner relationships
• What's working (and not working) with current partners
• Partnership appetite and experience

Suggested Questions:

• Are you working with any partners today? How's that going?
• What have you learned from past partnership experiences?
• What would make a partnership successful for you?

Note-Taking Prompt: Current partners, past experiences, success criteria

4. Potential Value & Fit

What to Learn:

• Where partnership could create value
• Alignment between offerings
• Mutual customer overlap

Suggested Questions:

• Where do you see potential alignment between what we each do?
• Do your customers ever ask about [your capability/offering]?
• How do you currently handle [the problem you solve]?

Note-Taking Prompt: Value opportunities, alignment areas, customer needs

5. Resources & Capabilities

What to Learn:

• Team capacity and bandwidth
• Technical and operational capabilities
• Investment ability (time, resources, budget)

Suggested Questions:

• Who on your team would be involved in a partnership like this?
• What does your typical partner onboarding process look like?
• How do you typically approach new partnership initiatives?

Note-Taking Prompt: Team capacity, capabilities, investment ability

6. Decision Process & Next Steps

What to Learn:

• How partnership decisions get made
• Timeline and urgency
• What needs to happen next

Suggested Questions:

• If this looks like a fit, what would your decision process look like?
• Who else would need to be involved in evaluating this?
• What would be a reasonable timeline for exploring this further?

Note-Taking Prompt: Decision makers, timeline, next actions

How to Use This Guide

Before the Call

1. Review the six topics to familiarize yourself with the flow
2. Customize questions based on what you already know
3. Prepare your note-taking setup (digital or paper)

During the Call

1. Start with business context to build rapport
2. Follow the conversation but use topics as guardrails
3. Capture notes using the prompts for each section
4. Adapt questions based on what you're hearing

After the Call

1. Review your notes and fill in any gaps
2. Assess partnership fit based on what you learned
3. Plan next steps or decide to pass

Who This Is For

• Partnership Managers conducting partner discovery
• Business Development qualifying partnership opportunities
• Sales Leaders evaluating channel partner prospects
• Founders exploring strategic partnerships

What's Included

• Partner Discovery Call Guide template
• Six structured conversation topics
• Suggested questions for each topic (conversational phrasing)
• Learning objectives for each section
• Note-taking prompts to capture key insights
• Lifetime access with updates

Benefits

• Never Miss Key Information with structured topics
• Sound Consultative with conversational questions
• Capture Better Notes with built-in prompts
• Qualify Faster with systematic discovery
• Prepare Better for follow-up conversations

From Script to Conversation

This isn't a rigid script to follow word-for-word. It's a framework to ensure you cover essential topics while maintaining a natural, consultative conversation. The best discovery calls feel like helpful business discussions, not interrogations.

Get Started

Purchase the Partner Discovery Call Guide today and conduct more effective partner discovery conversations.