Role-play your discovery call with the LLM as the prospect
Turns the LLM into a realistic discovery sparring partner with a hidden agenda you must dig to uncover — a buried pain, a held-back objection, internal politics — plus a curveball. Ends with a scorecard revealing what you missed and the two highest-impact fixes. It's rep practice with none of the scheduling and all of the honesty.
You are about to become my discovery call sparring partner. You will play the PROSPECT, not the coach — fully in character, based on the account brief I give you. You've been on the receiving end of hundreds of vendor calls, so play it real: give short answers to lazy questions and real information only when my questions earn it. Be busy, mildly skeptical, and occasionally check your metaphorical watch. If I ask a great question, open up the way real prospects do. If I pitch too early, do what real prospects do: get polite and vague. Rules of the game: - Stay in character until I say 'BREAK'. No coaching, no meta-commentary mid-call. - Build yourself a hidden agenda from my brief: one real pain you won't volunteer unless properly dug for, one objection you're holding back, and one piece of internal politics (a boss, a budget fight) that shapes your answers. Do not reveal these until my questioning legitimately uncovers them. - Throw me at least one curveball: an interruption, a 'can you just send pricing?', or an unexpected stakeholder concern. - When I say 'BREAK', step out of character and give me a scorecard: what I uncovered vs what was there to find (reveal the hidden agenda), my question quality (surface vs impact), my talk ratio as you experienced it, the moment I lost you or won you, and the two changes that would most improve my next real call. Before we start, interview me. Ask me these questions ONE AT A TIME, waiting for my answer each time: 1. What do you sell, and what does it fix? 2. Describe the prospect I'm playing — role, company type and size, and their likely situation. 3. What's your discovery weak spot — pitching too early, weak impact questions, losing control, folding at pushback? 4. How hard should I be: warm inbound lead, neutral cold-booked meeting, or openly skeptical 'my boss made me take this'? Once you have my answers, set the scene in two sentences and open the call as the prospect answering my greeting. Stay in character from that moment.
How to use it
- 1
Copy the prompt into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM.
- 2
Answer the setup interview, being honest about your weak spot in question 3 — the model will pressure-test it.
- 3
Run the call for 10-15 minutes of exchanges as if it were real; typed or via voice mode.
- 4
Say BREAK and read the scorecard, especially the hidden agenda reveal — what you didn't find is the lesson.
- 5
Rerun with difficulty raised or a different persona; three rounds before a big call is a genuine edge.
Best practices
Use voice mode if available — typing hides pacing problems that speaking exposes.
Ask for the same persona twice: once warm, once hostile; the delta shows you which skills are situational.
Paste a real account brief for question 2 before an important call and rehearse THAT conversation.
Sales leaders: have the whole team run the same brief, then compare scorecards in the next team meeting.
Example: what this looks like in practice
An AE with a big discovery call tomorrow — a VP of Operations at a 250-person 3PL — pastes the real account brief and asks for 'neutral cold-booked' difficulty. The model builds its hidden agenda: the buried pain is a key client threatening to leave over delivery errors; the held objection is a failed WMS rollout two years ago; the politics is a CFO who froze new tools. The AE opens well but pitches at minute six; the 'prospect' goes vague. At BREAK, the scorecard shows he found the client-retention pain but never uncovered the failed rollout — the exact landmine that would have detonated in the real call. He reruns once, digs properly, and walks into the real meeting the next day already knowing what a defensive answer about 'past tools' sounds like.
Best fit
This prompt is one gear in a bigger machine. We orchestrate 20+ tools into outbound systems our clients own — and guarantee the results.
Apply for a Pilot Spot → →Frequently asked questions
Yes, and it's one of the highest-value sales uses of an LLM — if the role-play is structured. The key is the hidden agenda: this prompt makes the model bury a pain, hold back an objection, and add internal politics you must legitimately uncover, then score you on what you missed. Without that structure, LLM prospects are too cooperative to teach you anything.
More discovery calls & demos prompts
Build a discovery question bank tailored to one persona
Generates a 15-question discovery bank built around one persona's actual responsibilities and failure modes, organized by call stage, with listening notes on what strong and weak answers sound like. Beats generic question lists because the interview forces your product, competitor, and deal-death context into every question.
Write a post-discovery summary email that mirrors their words
Produces a sub-180-word summary email built on the prospect's verbatim phrases, with impact-paired bullets, an invitation to correct you, and next steps with your commitments listed first. Mirroring their language proves you listened in a way no template can, and the email becomes the artifact your champion forwards internally.
Build a demo storyline from your discovery notes
Converts raw discovery notes or a transcript into a three-act demo storyline that opens on the prospect's problem in their own words, sequences scenes by deal importance, tells you what NOT to show, and scripts the close. It's the difference between a feature tour and a demo the champion replays internally.