The discovery call is where a video project is actually won, and it is also where most video businesses leak information. You take half a page of notes, the good parts stay in your head, and three days later you are writing a proposal from memory. Discovery call notes software built for a video client intake process should hold the shape of the conversation, not just a blank text box.
The Discovery Board is a workspace for the conversation itself. You can type through a guided structure or run Voice Mode and talk, and either way you finish the call with a record that captures the goals, deliverables, timeline, decision makers, and budget in fields the rest of the platform can read.
A note app is fine for capturing words and useless for capturing structure. It has no concept of a deliverable, a budget range, or a decision maker, so nothing in it can prefill a proposal or a quote. Every fact gets typed twice, and the second typing is where details get dropped.
A shared document template gets you consistency but not continuity. It lives outside the deal, it is not searchable across clients, and it cannot tell you that the last four corporate leads all asked for vertical cutdowns you are not quoting for.
Start a session and talk. Voice Mode transcribes the conversation and pulls it into the structured record as you go, so you can stay present on the call instead of typing. Mac's live call guide sits alongside the transcript with prompts for the questions that tend to get skipped — decision process, hard deadlines, existing footage, distribution plans, and budget.
If you would rather type, the same structure exists as a form. Voice Mode is an input method, not a separate product, and the record it produces is identical.
Every session resolves into the same shape: the client's stated goal, the pain behind it, deliverables discussed, timeline and hard dates, budget signal, and open questions. Because those are fields rather than paragraphs, you can scan a six-month-old session in fifteen seconds and know exactly where it stood.
Sessions attach to the contact and the deal, so the discovery record travels with the opportunity through the proposal, the contract, and the project.
When the call ends, Mac AI reads the session and drafts a clean summary in the language the client used, plus a suggested scope you can push into the Proposal Builder. You are editing a draft that already references the client's own words rather than staring at an empty page the night before it is due.
The draft is a starting point, not a send-ready document. You review it, cut what is wrong, and keep the parts that saved you forty minutes.
Individual sessions are useful. The set of them is more useful. Because discovery is structured, VPP can surface what keeps coming up across your calls — the deliverables clients ask for that you do not package, the objections that repeat, and the budget bands your inquiries actually cluster in. That feeds how you price and what you put on your website.
Notes on Free · Voice Mode and AI on Pro+. Typed discovery notes are part of the Free plan. Voice Mode transcription, Mac's live call guide, and AI-drafted summaries require Pro or Agency.
Lead Capture — The calculator answers and form responses appear in the session, so the call opens with scope and budget already on the table.
Proposal Builder — The discovery summary and suggested scope push straight into a proposal draft with the client's language intact.
Quote Builder — Deliverables captured in discovery become the phases and line items you cost out before you pitch.
Mac AI — Mac runs the live call guide and writes the summary, and later reads discovery activity into your weekly digest.
You control when a session starts and stops, and you are responsible for telling the client you are capturing the conversation, the same as with any call recording. Most owners simply say they take voice notes so nothing gets missed, and clients are fine with it.
Yes. Voice Mode works on a phone or laptop in the room, and the typed version works if speaking notes aloud is awkward. Some owners run the session immediately after an in-person meeting and talk through what happened while it is fresh, which produces a very good record.
A written recap of the conversation in the client's own framing, a list of deliverables discussed, timeline and budget signals, open questions to resolve, and a suggested scope you can send to the Proposal Builder. You review and edit it before anything goes to a client.
Either. You can run a session against an existing deal so the record lives with the opportunity, or start a standalone session for an exploratory conversation and attach it to a deal later once it becomes real work.
Structured typed discovery notes attached to contacts and deals, permanently and at no cost. Voice transcription, the live call guide, and AI summaries are Pro features because they carry a processing cost on every session.