How to research a prospect before a discovery call, in 10 minutes

Prospect research can swallow an afternoon: company size, funding, the team, the tech they use. For a discovery call about a prospect's website or marketing, the questions you'll ask come from somewhere else.

They come from the prospect's own pages. Specifically, the page their visitors actually land on, which isn't always the homepage, and how it differs from the homepage. Every difference between the two is something the prospect may not have noticed, and that makes it a good question.

This is prospect research in the sales sense, not donor research. Our discovery call routine reads one page in ten minutes. This post goes one step wider: two pages, compared, in the same ten minutes. We can't publish a prospect's website, so two pages of our own site play the prospect: the klarnio.com homepage and klarnio.com/website-grader, audited by Klarnio on 5 and 6 October 2026. Every quote below is taken word for word from those pages and audits.

Minutes 0 to 2: find the page their visitors land on

The homepage is where you start. It may not be where their visitors start. Four quick ways to find the page that matters:

1. Search for what they sell, not their name. If one of their pages comes up, that's a page strangers can find without knowing their name.
2. Follow the link in their social profiles. Check where it points; it may not be the homepage.
3. Look up their ads, if they run any, in Google's Ads Transparency Center or Meta's Ad Library (both free), and see where they point. Paid traffic goes where they chose to send it, and that page is the one they're paying for.
4. Ask in the booking form: "Which page should we look at together?" It costs one field, and the answer shows which page they're thinking about.

For Klarnio, the grader page was built for people searching "website grader", so that's where those visitors would land. They may never see the homepage.

Minutes 2 to 5: read both first screens side by side

Open the homepage and the landing page next to each other, and read only what's visible before you scroll. Write down what each one says the business is.

The klarnio.com homepage opens with the visitor's problem:

"Your website has 30 seconds to say something worth acting on."

The audit marked that as passing its "problem before product" check. The same headline fails Klarnio's three copy tests (it's on the prep sheet in our discovery call routine), but it does put the visitor's problem before the product, which is all this check asks. The grader page opens with the product instead:

"A website grader that reads your words."

And the audit's note on that page:

"The first screen opens with the product, "A website grader that reads your words.", and the reader's own problem never appears above the fold."

Same business, two first impressions. One talks about the visitor, the other about the tool. That's the first thing to ask about: "Which of these do you think a new visitor sees first, and is it the one you'd choose?"

Minutes 5 to 7: count what each page shows

Scroll each page and count the things a buyer looks for: headings, buttons and links, prices.

1. Headings: 26 on the homepage, 13 on the grader page.
2. Buttons and links: 18 on the homepage, 13 on the grader page.
3. Prices: 7 on the homepage, including four plan prices, and none on the grader page.

The last line is the finding. The homepage shows four plans with prices. A visitor who arrives on the grader page from search sees "free" for the audit, and for everything else gets a link that sends them away:

"See pricing on the homepage →"

A visitor deciding whether the paid plans are worth it has to leave the page they landed on. On the call, that's a question, not a criticism: "When someone lands on the grader page, how do they find out what the paid plans cost?"

Minutes 7 to 9: look for proof, and for who it's written for

Two more checks, on both pages.

Proof: what backs up the claims?

Look for customer stories, case studies, numbers with dates. Note what's there and what's said about what isn't. The klarnio.com homepage says this plainly:

"No testimonials on this page. None were recorded, and Klarnio does not make them up."

Its proof is a founder's story instead. The grader page's proof is a dated self-grade:

"Our own homepage, graded on 28 September 2026."

Both are honest, and neither shows a customer. The audit flagged the same gap on both pages: nobody is followed from before to after. That's a question with a useful answer either way: "Is there a customer we could follow from their first score to their second?"

Audience: who is each page talking to?

Read each page asking: who is "you"? The homepage passes the audit's "one clear reader" check, and its plan names say who each tier is for. The grader page doesn't. The audit's note:

"The page addresses an undefined "you" with a URL, and the freelancer with clients only surfaces once in the FAQ, so no single segment is clearly spoken to."

So the homepage knows its reader and the landing page doesn't. A visitor from search meets a page written for nobody in particular. That's your third question: "Who is the grader page for?"

Minute 9 to 10: write the research in three lines

Ten minutes of research is only useful if it fits on a card. Write three lines:

1. Where visitors land, and what they see first.
2. The biggest difference between that page and the homepage.
3. The one thing neither page shows.

For klarnio.com:

1. The grader page, built for search visitors, opens with the product, not their problem.
2. The homepage shows four plans with prices; the grader page shows none and links away.
3. Neither page follows a customer from before to after.

Each line has a place in the call. Line 1 is your opening question: ask which page they think a new visitor sees first. Line 2 waits until they talk about price or sign-ups, then becomes the question about how a visitor from search finds the plans. Line 3 belongs near the end, because it's the start of the work: a customer story is something you can scope, and our web design proposal template shows where it goes.

Those three lines are the start of your prep sheet. The opening line, the questions and the first fix go on the same page; our discovery call routine shows the rest of it.

What to leave out

For this kind of call, three things can wait:

1. Funding and company size. They matter for some deals. For a call about their website, they tell you nothing about the page.
2. The tech stack. Unless the call is about a rebuild, the platform isn't the conversation.
3. A long look at the person. Give it thirty seconds: their role, from the booking form or the site's about page, so you know whether they can change the page you'll talk about.

Every minute you spend there is a minute you didn't spend on their pages.

Do the research faster

Klarnio covers most of minutes 2 to 9, one page at a time: it reads the first screen, counts what's on the page while it runs, and its report covers the proof and audience checks, quoting the sentences that fail. Comparing two pages is still your job. Start with the page their visitors land on; audit the homepage too if your plan allows another audit, or compare it by hand with the steps above.

We're deciding whether to build a version that does this before every call: Call Prep. The prospect books and types their website, Klarnio audits it, and a brief with the gaps, the questions and the line to open with arrives before the meeting. It isn't built yet. If you'd use it, join the waitlist.

Frequently asked questions

Audit a prospect before your call

Paste the page your prospect's visitors land on into Klarnio. In two to three minutes you get both scores, the gaps under each of the three visitor questions, and the exact sentences on their page that a visitor won't act on, quoted word for word. Where a rewrite needs a fact the page doesn't give, it leaves a blank rather than inventing one.

It's free, needs no account, just your email.