They told you there’s no budget. There is.
The scenario:
The prospect said it early. “We don’t really have budget for that right now.” You heard a closed door and started backing toward it.
“No budget” almost never means no money exists. It means not allocated, not a priority yet, or I don’t see the value. Each of those is a different conversation, and none of them is a no. You backed off a deal that was still open.
The prompt:
You’re building discovery questions that surface a prospect’s real budget situation.
Works in any AI tool.
Context: [your service, your average deal size, the type of prospect]
Build:
5 questions that reveal what the problem already costs them (downtime, wasted hours, current spend)
3 questions that surface who actually controls the budget
2 questions that test whether this is a priority or a nice-to-have
A way to reframe “no budget” into “not yet allocated” without being pushy
A summary line that ties the cost of the problem to the cost of the fix
Keep it conversational, not an interrogation.