A discovery-call agenda template structures your first conversation with a prospect, ensuring you extract the information needed to scope, price, and position SEO or web services accurately while building credibility through organized professionalism.
The template is a question sequence designed to extract the context you need before recommending tactics or quoting pricing. Without structure, discovery calls meander into vague goals like 'more traffic' or 'better rankings,' leaving you to guess intent and scope. A proper agenda forces the prospect to articulate current performance, desired outcomes, internal capacity, and budget reality. You're gathering inputs for a diagnosis, not delivering a pitch deck. The template also signals competence: sending a structured agenda 24 hours in advance shows you run a process, not a freestyle conversation. This alone filters out prospects who aren't serious—they'll ghost or reschedule if they can't prepare. For agencies managing multiple verticals, the template becomes a living document: you refine questions per industry so a Vancouver e-commerce call differs from a Toronto law-firm call in specifics, but the underlying framework stays consistent.
Send the agenda as a calendar invite attachment or follow-up email at least 24 hours before the scheduled time. Include a note asking the prospect to review it and gather any relevant materials: Google Analytics or Search Console logins, examples of competitor sites they admire, recent campaign reports if they've done paid or SEO work previously. This prep step surfaces friction early. If they can't find analytics credentials or don't know who manages their site, you learn their internal maturity level before investing call time. For Canadian clients, mention timezone explicitly in the invite—Toronto and Vancouver are three hours apart, and confusion kills momentum. Also confirm who else will join the call. Discovery works best one-on-one with the decision-maker, but sometimes a marketing manager or developer joins. Knowing attendees in advance lets you tailor depth: a founder wants business outcomes, a dev wants implementation feasibility.
Start with questions that establish how the business makes money and where digital channels fit. Ask what the primary revenue source is—product sales, lead generation, subscription sign-ups, franchise inquiries. Then ask what percentage of revenue currently comes from organic search versus paid, referral, or direct traffic. This reveals dependency and opportunity. For example, a Montreal SaaS company pulling 60% revenue from paid ads has high acquisition cost risk; growing organic share becomes a strategic hedge. Next, ask about average transaction value or customer lifetime value if they track it. This anchors ROI expectations: a $200 one-time sale needs different volume assumptions than a $5,000 annual contract. Finally, ask how they currently measure success. If they say 'rankings,' probe deeper—rankings for what terms, and do those terms correlate with revenue? Many prospects conflate visibility with outcomes, and this question exposes that gap early.
Ask what SEO or content work they've done previously, and why it stopped or didn't work. Listen for agency churn, failed in-house hires, or abandoned strategies. A prospect who hired three agencies in two years signals unclear expectations or internal dysfunction; you need to address that before scoping. Request access to Google Analytics and Search Console during the call if possible, or immediately after. Walk through top landing pages, traffic trends over the past 12 months, and any visible algorithm-impact dates. Ask if they've received manual actions or seen sudden drops they couldn't explain. For e-commerce, ask about product-page templates, category structure, and whether they have a blog or resource section. For local service businesses, verify Google Business Profile ownership and ask how many locations they operate. The goal here is to inventory assets and liabilities: what exists that you can leverage, and what technical debt or penalty history will slow progress.
Ask the prospect to define success in concrete terms: a specific monthly lead volume, a revenue target, a market-share position relative to a named competitor. Vague goals like 'grow visibility' aren't actionable. If they struggle to articulate a number, offer a framework: 'If we doubled organic traffic in 12 months, what would that mean for your business?' Then surface constraints. Ask about budget range—not to close a deal, but to avoid proposing a strategy they can't fund. In Canada, clarify whether budget is in CAD and if HST/GST is a consideration for their accounting. Ask about timeline: do they need results before a seasonal peak, a funding round, or a competitor launch? Finally, ask who owns implementation internally. Can they publish content weekly, or does everything go through a compliance review? Can a developer deploy schema markup, or is site access locked by a vendor? Mismatched capacity and strategy is the top reason retainers stall, so expose this now.
Confirm who makes the final hiring decision and what the approval process looks like. If you're speaking to a marketing manager but the CMO or founder has final say, ask when you can present to that stakeholder. Multi-tier approval processes slow deals, but knowing upfront lets you plan. Ask if they're evaluating other agencies or considering in-house. This isn't about competition anxiety; it's about understanding urgency and criteria. A prospect comparing three agencies will focus on price; one burned by a previous provider will focus on trust signals. Finally, outline next steps explicitly. Summarize the key points you heard—goals, constraints, current state—and confirm you understood correctly. Then state what you'll deliver and when: 'I'll send a proposal by Thursday that includes a phased strategy, timeline, and investment range. Does that work?' This verbal contract prevents ghosting and sets a follow-up cadence. End the call with a calendar invite for the proposal review if they agree to one.
An e-commerce discovery call needs questions about SKU count, seasonal traffic patterns, and cart-abandonment rate. A local service business needs questions about service-area geography, competitor proximity, and review volume. A SaaS company needs questions about trial-to-paid conversion definitions and whether product pages are indexed. The template isn't rigid; it's a checklist of dimensions to cover. For smaller deals, compress the call to 30 minutes and focus on goals and current state only. For enterprise or multi-location prospects, extend to 60 minutes and include questions about CMS limitations, multi-brand coordination, and internal stakeholder alignment. In bilingual markets like Quebec, ask which language versions exist and whether they want parity or should prioritize one. The framework's value is consistency: every call covers the same strategic dimensions, but the depth and wording flex per context.
Send it 24 hours before the scheduled call, not immediately after booking. This timing gives the prospect enough notice to prepare but not so much lead time that they forget. Include a note asking them to gather analytics logins, competitor examples, or internal stakeholder input if needed. The agenda acts as a filter: serious prospects will engage with it, and those who ghost or reschedule signal low intent early.
Respect the boundary but explain the tradeoff: without data, your proposal will be generic and likely inaccurate on scope and pricing. Offer an alternative like a screenshot of top landing pages and traffic sources, or a read-only Analytics share that expires after the proposal. If they're unwilling to share anything, that's a red flag for trust or internal dysfunction, and you may choose to decline the engagement.
A sales script is a monologue designed to pitch and close. A discovery agenda is a diagnostic question sequence designed to extract information so you can scope accurately. You're not selling during discovery; you're auditing the prospect's situation to determine if you can help and what that help looks like. The proposal is where positioning happens, but it's only credible if discovery was thorough.
Plan 45 minutes for most small-to-midsize engagements. You can compress to 30 if the prospect is clear on goals and you have pre-call analytics access, or extend to 60 for complex multi-stakeholder or enterprise deals. Always end with a 5-minute summary and next-steps confirmation to avoid ambiguity. Block more calendar time than you announce so you're not rushing if the conversation runs deep.
Ask permission first if you want to record—it's legally required in some Canadian provinces and builds trust. If the prospect declines, take live notes in a shared Google Doc or CRM form visible to them during the call. This transparency keeps you honest and lets the prospect correct misunderstandings in real time. Summarize key points verbally at call-end to confirm alignment before you hang up.
That's diagnostic information in itself—it signals low analytics maturity or organizational gaps. Offer to help them get access to Analytics or set up tracking as a precursor to strategy work, or scope the engagement to include a baseline audit phase. Don't guess their numbers to move the deal forward; inaccurate assumptions create scope creep and misaligned expectations later. Frame the gap as an opportunity, not a blocker.