Spin Discovery Question Planner

Scenario: First discovery call with a mid-market manufacturing prospect

Trigger: Rep asks — "I have a discovery call next Tuesday with an operations director at a 200-person manufacturer. We sell production scheduling software. Help me plan my questions."

Process: 1. Deal context: large sale, first call, no prior needs data. Product capabilities: scheduling automation, bottleneck detection, operator load balancing. 2. Likely problems: (a) manual scheduling leads to production bottlenecks, (b) operator overtime from poor load distribution, (c) last-minute changes cascade into downstream delays. 3. Situation Questions (limited): "What does your current scheduling process look like?" / "How far in advance are you typically scheduling production runs?" 4. Problem Questions: "Are you finding that last-minute order changes create downstream disruptions?" / "When one line slows down, how does that ripple into the rest of the schedule?" 5. Implication chain for Problem (a): Implied Need likely heard: "Yes, we have bottlenecks when orders change." Consequences: delayed shipments → customer dissatisfaction → expediting costs → overtime. Implication Questions: "What's the downstream effect when a bottleneck forces a late shipment?" / "How much overtime do you typically absorb when you're trying to catch up?" 6. Need-payoff: "If you could catch a bottleneck forming 24 hours in advance, what would that mean for your on-time delivery rate?"

Output: question-bank-acme-mfg-2026-04-15.md — a three-problem, three-chain question bank with sequence guide. Rep reads it the morning of the call.

Scenario: Follow-up call after a discovery call where Implied Needs were surfaced

Trigger: Rep shares needs-log.md showing two Implied Needs: "approval workflow is slow" and "reporting takes two days." "I'm seeing them next week — what do I ask?"

Process: 1. Deal context: follow-up call, large sale, two Implied Needs already logged. Reduce Situation Questions to near zero — context is established. 2. Prior implied needs → needs to be developed into Explicit Needs via Implication chains before any solution presentation. 3. Implication chain for "approval workflow is slow": Consequences: deals slip because contracts wait in queue → salespeople lose momentum → deals lost to faster-moving competitors → revenue at risk. Implication Questions: "When a contract sits in queue, how long does the delay typically run?" / "Have you lost any deals because a competitor moved faster while your approval was pending?" 4. Need-payoff after development: "If you could cut approval time from days to hours, what would that mean for your close rate?"

Output: question-bank-deal-name-2026-04-22.md with two Implication chains, minimal Situation Questions, and Need-payoff questions ready after each chain.

Scenario: Implication chain worked example (verbatim dialogue reference)

Trigger: Rep asks — "How do Implication Questions actually work in practice? Show me an example."

Process: Reference the Contortomat/Easiflo dialogue in references/contortomat-implication-dialogue.md. The dialogue shows a seller starting from a mild Implied Need ("the machines are rather hard to use") and building it — through 7 Implication Questions — into a recognized $25,000+ annual problem, at which point a $120,000 solution no longer seems unreasonable. The worked example is the clearest illustration of how the value equation shifts through Implication questioning.