Industry-Specific Discovery Question Bank

SaaS / Technology

1. What's your current churn rate, and where does most of it come from?
2. How does this fit alongside your existing stack — replace or complement?
3. What's driving your CAC payback period right now?
4. Who owns integration risk on your side?
5. What happens to your roadmap if this isn't solved this quarter?
6. How does your security/procurement review typically run?

Financial Services

1. What's the compliance burden of your current process?
2. Who from risk or compliance needs to sign off?
3. What audit findings, if any, pushed this up the priority list?
4. How does this affect time-to-close on client onboarding?
5. What's your current exposure if this process fails an audit?
6. Who else outside your team touches this workflow?

Healthcare / Health Tech

1. How does this affect patient wait time or care quality?
2. What HIPAA or compliance constraints shape your evaluation?
3. Who on the clinical side needs to be involved in this decision?
4. What's the cost of clinician time lost to the current process?
5. How does this tie to a reimbursement or accreditation deadline?
6. What's failed in a similar rollout here before?

Manufacturing

1. What's your current downtime cost per hour?
2. How does this affect throughput on the floor?
3. Who owns capital expenditure approval for something like this?
4. What's the safety or compliance angle here?
5. How does this integrate with your existing ERP/MES?
6. What's the plant-level appetite for change vs. corporate mandate?

Retail / E-commerce

1. What's this costing you in cart abandonment or conversion?
2. How does this affect your peak-season readiness?
3. Who owns the customer experience metric this touches?
4. What's your current AOV impact from this problem?
5. How does this play with your existing POS/inventory systems?
6. What did last Q4 teach you about this gap?

Professional Services / Agencies

1. How does this affect utilization rate across your team?
2. What's the cost of a missed billable hour here?
3. Who owns client-facing risk if this goes wrong?
4. How does this tie to renewal or retainer conversations?
5. What's the current handoff friction between departments?
6. How does this affect your win rate on proposals?

Logistics / Supply Chain

1. What's your current cost per shipment tied to this issue?
2. How does this affect on-time delivery rate?
3. Who owns carrier/vendor relationships affected by this?
4. What's the impact during peak volume periods?
5. How does this integrate with your TMS/WMS?
6. What visibility gap is costing you the most right now?

Real Estate

1. How does this affect days-on-market or deal velocity?
2. What's the cost of a missed lead in your pipeline today?
3. Who owns the broker/agent adoption risk?
4. How does this tie to your current CRM or MLS setup?
5. What's driving urgency — a season, a market shift, a compliance change?
6. How does this affect commission-affecting workflows?

Education

1. How does this affect student/faculty adoption?
2. Who owns budget approval — department or central IT?
3. What's the accreditation or compliance angle?
4. How does this tie to the academic calendar?
5. What's the cost of the current manual workaround?
6. Who else across departments would need to buy in?

Nonprofit

1. How does this affect donor retention or grant reporting?
2. What's the board-level visibility into this problem?
3. Who owns budget in a lean, grant-funded structure?
4. What's the cost of staff time lost to this workaround?
5. How does this tie to your fiscal year or grant cycle?
6. What would this free up your team to focus on instead?

Construction

1. What's this costing you in schedule delays?
2. Who owns subcontractor coordination risk here?
3. How does this affect safety or compliance reporting?
4. What's the impact during your busiest build season?
5. How does this integrate with your project management system?
6. What's the cost of a single change-order miscommunication?

Insurance

1. How does this affect claims cycle time?
2. Who owns underwriting risk tied to this process?
3. What's the compliance/regulatory angle driving urgency?
4. What's the cost of a delayed or inaccurate claim?
5. How does this integrate with your policy admin system?
6. Who else — legal, actuarial — needs to weigh in?