uygnoey Coaching discovery calls against a playbook
Derived from the call coach described by John Albert, a business development rep at Anthropic: "We use a skill that evaluates Gong transcripts against our discovery call playbook and builds a scorecard for each call, with specific feedback based on the conversation."
The scorecard has a fixed shape, and the shape is the useful part: it forces prioritization instead of a list of everything that could have gone better.
Instructions
1. Write the discovery playbook down
The skill evaluates transcripts against the team's discovery call playbook. If the playbook lives in people's heads, there is nothing to evaluate against and the feedback becomes generic advice.
The playbook needs, per area of the call, criteria concrete enough that a transcript either meets them or does not.
Structure in templates/discovery-playbook.md.
2. Evaluate the transcript, not the impression
Feed the call transcript and score it against the playbook. Feedback must be "specific feedback based on the conversation" — tied to what was said, quotable back to the rep.
3. Produce the four-part scorecard
The post specifies exactly what the feedback includes:
- Top three things done well.
- Top three areas to improve.
- An explicit pass or fail score on the criteria.
- A single highest-leverage thing to practice next.
Keep all four, and keep the counts. Three and three is a forcing function; the single practice item is what makes the scorecard actionable rather than comprehensive.
Format in templates/scorecard.md.
4. Make pass/fail explicit
The post calls out an explicit pass or fail against the criteria. A scorecard that only offers commentary lets everyone read their own call as a pass. State the verdict, and state which criterion decided it.
Guidance on setting the bar: references/scoring-criteria.md.
5. Feed corrections back
As with the team's other skills: when the scoring is wrong, record why, so the skill does not repeat it. A coach that mis-scores twice in the same way stops being read.
Examples
A call that passes with a clear next practice item. Three specific strengths quoted from the transcript, three specific gaps, a pass, and one thing to practice — for instance, a habit of moving to the next question before the customer finished the answer.
A call that fails on one criterion. The rest of the conversation was strong, and the scorecard says so in the "done well" section, but the criterion that decided the fail is named explicitly rather than buried in the improvement list.
Feedback that stays specific. "Ask better qualifying questions" is not usable. "When they mentioned the migration deadline, the follow-up moved to product rather than to what happens if the deadline slips" is.
Coaching at book scale. Every discovery call gets the same standard applied, rather than only the calls a manager had time to listen to.