Start with the number they track
Every business has a number that keeps the owner awake. Signed clients each month. Retention after the first program. Enquiries that turn into calls. Ask which number they would move first if they could, and watch how they answer. A prospect who does not track anything is telling you something useful: part of your work will be setting the measure, not just moving it.
Ask for the figure as it stands today, before you discuss what it could become. If they do not know it, ask them to check it before your next conversation.
Ask for the current value and the target
Once you have the number, get two data points: where it sits now, and where they want it. The gap between them is the engagement in one line, and it gives you both something to check progress against later. Push for a specific target and a rough date, because vague ambitions cannot be measured.
Two numbers are enough. You are building a shared reference, not a financial model. Write the figures down exactly as they gave them, and repeat them back before you move on.
Ask what staying put is costing
The second half of discovery is the cost of no change. Time spent on work a system should do. Enquiries lost because follow-up came too late. Clients who drift away after the first block. Ask them to put a rough figure or a rough number of hours against each one.
This is not a scare tactic; it sets the size of the problem in their own words, which they will repeat to whoever else is involved in the decision. Keep it rough and honest, because estimates they believe beat calculations they do not.
Agree how you will measure it together
End discovery with the cadence: which number, reviewed how often, recorded where. That agreement is what turns a promising first session into a program with a shape.
In QwikSol, the assessment uncovers KPIs as part of its four-phase conversation and matches them to a library of coaching strategies, with projected impact shown clearly as a projection. The matched strategies carry implementation steps you can hand to the client, and progress against those steps sits in their portal, so the numbers you agreed at the start stay visible for the whole engagement.
- Find the one number your prospect worries about, and get today's figure.
- Agree a target and a rough date, or progress becomes an argument.
- Record the agreed measure and review cadence before the work starts.