Conducting a Discovery Call is a great way for you to identify and understand what your prospect's needs are. This is key to creating more opportunities for them to work with you long-term. In a market wherein your potential clients are already bombarded with a lot of elevator pitches and marketing messages, this is an effective method to create meaningful connection with your prospect without using gimmicks and repetitive presentations. In this episode, I’m going to show you how putting together a simple report model can create interest and even generate buzz for your ergo services, which can help make a good impression with new prospects as well as get more business from your existing clients.

Discovery Call

An effective Discovery Call or a Gap Analysis—however you want to phrase it—is one of the vital things that you need to have to be a successful ergonomics consultant. Discovery call helps you create a strong relationship with potential new clients and understand their needs much better. Its goal is to identify the gaps between where your prospects currently are now and where they want to be (a.k.a. an optimal ergonomics program). You want to find out as much as you can about what business issues your potential customers are facing, what their requirements are, and what goals they have. 

Beyond helping you build that know, like, and trust factor with your prospects, there are many benefits of a discovery call. Below are some of the reasons why you should think about making a goal analysis or discovery call:

4 Reasons Why Having Discovery Calls Should be a Non-negotiable For You:

1. It showcases your services to more people without being "salesy". 

When we talk about what a discovery call is, most people think that they should dive straight into all the details of their service right off the bat. However, that’s the absolute wrong thing you need to avoid. Instead, you need to ask them questions to uncover their needs, wants, and desires. That’s the meat of what a discovery call really is. 

The good thing about discovery calls is that you’ll be able to showcase your ergo consultancy business without being over the top. Keep in mind that during the discovery call, you’re not attempting to sell your services. Instead, you're trying to gain their trust while learning more about them. And by making more of your services visible, you give your prospects a chance to say, "Me too, I need this service." Letting your prospects know that you understand their struggles, their needs, and even their goals can make all the difference in letting them come to a conclusion that your service is the best choice for them.

2. It adds a lot of value to your prospect and customer.

Discovery Calls are incredibly valuable to both your potential client and customer. You want to provide so much value to your customer in a way that allows them to take action with you and the only next step is your services. Both of you have the opportunity to get to know one another better through the discovery process. 

You can categorize your system into low, medium, and high risk/need so they know exactly where to start off from and they can prioritize their budget and their next steps. If you want, you can create a template of this so you don't have to always reinvent the wheel every time you do one of these reports. You just have to fill out what you saw in that company and determine whether or not that meets their expectation or it needs more work. Your prospect may not realize that they’re at risk of those particular systems or that it's because of those systems that they’re spending huge amounts of money on rework, bringing in new employees, or finding qualified workers. It's your responsibility as an Ergonomics Consultant to identify what the ergonomic issue is and inform them what services you can offer to address the root cause of their ergonomic problems.

3. Addressing the systematic needs of the company will open you up to do more assessments.

Every Discovery Call relies on the questions that you ask your prospects. It’s important to ask them questions to ensure that you’re both on the same page. You want to be crystal clear on what really is going on in their ergonomics process, or lack thereof of ergonomics process. If you can turn your discovery call into another opportunity to talk about your service to address your prospect’s ergonomic challenges, you can set your services apart as the solution that they’re looking for.

The key thing here is to present your client with a list of everything that they need to do. For instance, it could be that your prospect doesn't have yearly ergonomics training and one-on-one ergonomic assessments. Perhaps they don't conduct surveys for their employees or don't follow up on Workers' Compensation Claims. So what I would do is I would list each service they need based on how big of an impact each of those can have on their bottom line. 

4. It will lead to better client results.

Gathering pertinent information from a prospective client for your Ergo Service business is crucial. You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so it can be the most crucial conversation that you have, so it’s good to have a plan before starting this. That’s why I want to recommend a really fantastic tool that I've previously used when I worked with participatory ergonomics programs up and running. You can use this exact same tool to motivate you to come up with a question that, when reverse-engineered, will create an opportunity to offer your services.

Check out the tool here: Participative Ergonomic Blueprint

Your Next Steps

One of our goals in using Discovery Calls is to show our clients all of the opportunities that they can improve the health and safety of their employees, reduce work-related injuries, and increase all those other elements that we know come along with putting in ergonomics processes and optimizing the whole workplace system. With Discovery Calls, you can become a trusted resource to your prospects and clients. It helps develop a long, mutually beneficial relationship so that when there’s an issue arising in any sort of workplace context, you’ll be the first person they’ll contact. I hope that you see how this is all coming to affect how you're really providing value to your prospects and clients. 

Need to up your game? I encourage you to sign-up for this upcoming live webinar, Thriving Ergo Business, happening this November 3, 2022. This is a free, worthwhile webinar that will teach you how to create a successful Ergo business by drawing in clients, earning more money, and standing out from the crowd. If you’re running your own Ergonomic Consulting business or if you want to start your own, this training is for you. Sign up today to join this exciting live training event.

Want to stay out of any expensive litigation and build a reputation as a reliable resource for your clients? Keep an eye out for the training that will be happening this November 9th. A Workers' Compensation Board and Labor & Employment Lawyer will be answering all of your Legal Questions. The only way to gain access to this Masterclass is to be a member of the Accelerate program. Click here to know the details on how you can join this training.