Discovery Call Question Guide

A structured discovery guide for one deal shape: opening frame, the questions that surface pain, budget and process without an interrogation, the signals to listen for, and an explicit disqualification checklist.

A Markdown discovery guide containing: (1) a 30-second opening frame written verbatim; (2) five question blocks — Situation, Pain, Impact, Process, Decision — of four to six open questions each with a suggested time budget; (3) an 'if the answer is vague' follow-up per block; (4) a 'Listen for' section of six signals with their meaning; (5) a disqualification checklist of four or five tickable criteria.

# Discovery guide — warehouse robotics retrofit (30 minutes)

## Opening frame (say this, 30 seconds)
> Thanks for the time. I want to be useful rather than pitch, so I am going to spend most of this asking about how your site actually runs. If it turns out a retrofit is wrong for your layout or your lease, I will tell you on this call rather than after a survey. Does that work?

## 1. Situation (5 minutes)
- Walk me through what a shift looks like from goods-in to dispatch.
- How big is the site and how much of it is racked?
- How many pickers are on the floor on a normal day, and on your peak day?
- What is already automated, and when was it put in?
- How long is left on the lease?

**If the answer is vague:** ask for yesterday specifically. 'How many people were on the floor yesterday' gets a real number where 'typically' gets an estimate.

## 2. Pain (6 minutes)
- Where does the floor back up on a bad day?
- What is your current pick rate, and what would you need it to be?
- How much of the shift goes on travel rather than picking?
- What did you try last that did not work?
- How is the labour market where you are right now?

**If the answer is vague:** ask what happened the last time they missed a dispatch cut-off, and who noticed.

## 3. Impact (5 minutes)
- What does a missed cut-off cost you with your largest customer?
- If the pick rate stayed where it is through next peak, what breaks first?
- Are you currently covering peak with agency labour, and at what premium?
- Who feels this most outside the four walls of the warehouse?

**If the answer is vague:** ask them to size it in people rather than money. 'How many extra heads does peak cost you' is answerable when a cost figure is not.

## 4. Process (7 minutes)
- What would have to happen between today and a system running on your floor?
- Has the site had a capital project of this size before, and how did it go?
- Who runs maintenance, and are they in-house or contracted?
- What does your engineering team need to sign off on a retrofit into live racking?
- What is the longest you could take the affected aisles out of service?

**If the answer is vague:** ask about the last comparable project instead of this one. Past process predicts future process better than a plan does.

## 5. Decision (5 minutes)
- Who else has to agree, and what do they each care about?
- Is this funded from an existing capital line or would it need a new case?
- What has stopped a project like this at your company before?
- If we do a site survey and it looks good, what is the step after that?

**If the answer is vague:** ask who signed the last purchase of a similar size. Titles are aspirational; signatures are not.

## Listen for
- **They quote a pick rate from memory.** They measure the thing you improve. Real deal.
- **They name a customer who complained.** External pressure is the only reliable clock in a nine-month cycle.
- **They mention peak twice unprompted.** Seasonality is the forcing event; get the survey inside the window before it.
- **They talk about the lease before you ask.** Either a blocker they already know about, or a renewal that creates budget.
- **They cannot name who runs maintenance.** The retrofit will have no owner after go-live. Slow down.
- **Everything is 'we would need to look into that'.** Politeness, not process. This is a no that has not been said yet.

## Disqualify on the call if
- [ ] The racked footprint is under 40,000 square feet.
- [ ] Fewer than two years remain on the lease with no renewal in progress.
- [ ] There is no in-house maintenance capability and no appetite to build one.
- [ ] No capital budget exists and nobody can name who would create one.
- [ ] The operations director cannot describe a consequence of doing nothing.