Do you do Discovery well?

Most people who have involvement in sales have an understanding that there is a concept of Discovery – where we attempt to understand if the customer has a problem we can solve. Sellers who do this really well (whether professional account executives, founders learning the sales ropes, or anyone else) add extraordinary value to the sales process. However, in my experience great Discovery is rare. Stunningly rare.

Far, far too often we launch into a product pitch – we rely on the crutch of slides. I recommend not doing this. Don’t use slides in your first meeting. You don’t even need a verbal pitch. Instead, we must learn – but not by going through a list of questions, where we don’t really listen. There’s the keyword: listen. Great Discovery involves engaging in a conversation, showing genuine curiosity regards your prospect’s business and challenges. Understanding what’s really causing them problems and what could make a real difference. When they tell you something, engage a little deeper, ask a follow-up question. Find out the why, not just the what. Understand the consequences to them.

Through this conversation we can show a degree of knowledge about their problem area such that they want to learn more from you. We don’t show this expertise through pitching, but through asking great questions and dropping tidbits of best practice. After all, we are talking to 10s or 100s of companies about these problems and we should know more than any one individual in one prospect, but we have to show that through empathetic engagement, not through pitching our product.

R PRODUCT. It’s hard to hear, especially if you’re a founder, but they really don’t. They care about their problem (which hopefully you can solve). Therefore, you need them to talk about the problem and you need to be really interested in it. If you do this well, understanding them and showing you have a degree of expertise, they will be enthusiastic to continue the conversation and see how you can help them.

So, please remember the following:

- Discovery is about a genuine, curious, human, conversation. Find out what matters to them.

- Discovery about determining whether you can help them and whether they are likely to want your help.

- Great Discovery means you can deliver an incredibly focused pitch that shows how you will solve their problems. Not how you generally fit with the market.

- Discovery continues throughout the process. It is not just at the beginning. As you meet new people, you must discover what matters to them. As you move through the sales process, you need to discover new information. Constantly ask curious questions and revalidate.

- In a discovery conversation, whenever it occurs in the process, the customer should be talking 60%+ of the time.