ounceoz

US Sales Director

OG Sales Savage

IMO Discovery is often done horribly! What say you?

* Title edited for clarification

* Clearly Discovery is VERY important but the type of questions often asked and the length of time spent is a weak area for MANY reps.

* Sandler and SPIN often promote a Discovery method that puts the work back on the prospect. Not ideal especially when much of the PAIN should be known before you even start the call.

*Targeted discovery requiring your prospect to validate what is "known pain given stated problem" and drills down on specific details for their org is ideal.

Check out this poll, 55% say The Discovery call is the most important. I am a firm believer there are few exceptions to needing a long drawn out discovery call to understand the problems and their needs. I believe you should know your product and service well enough to understand the problem you are solving for a majority of your prospects. Seems wasting time especially at the C-level asking discovery questions and uncovering needs is unnecessary and in my experience the C-level sees this as a wast of their time. Thoughts?

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👑 Sales Strategy

24

45 comments

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braintank

Politicker

20

Enterprise Account Executive

You sir, are an idiot

E_Money

Big Shot

8

💰

🙄

braintank

Politicker

5

Enterprise Account Executive

Discovery is critical to see if a deal is real and make it stick.

I agree that asking a CISO basic discovery questions is a waste of time, but intelligent discovery at that level is golden.

ounceoz

WR Officer

1

US Sales Director

Qualification is how I see if a deal is real.. Is there a real project, do they have money, who is supporting this, timeline? All this is not discovery to me. Discovery to me is Sandler BS asking a million questions about how this affects that and what if this was fixed what would that mean? All stuff I think any AE should know inside and out.

braintank

Politicker

3

Enterprise Account Executive

Seems like semantics to me. What you describe as qualification I put in discovery.

ounceoz

WR Officer

1

US Sales Director

Please elaborate

CuriousFox

WR Officer

13

🦊

Hard disagree friend. Thanks for sharing.

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

So you think Discovery is the most important? More than demo/pitch?

CuriousFox

WR Officer

7

🦊

How are you going to pitch something without knowing their specific needs?

Corpslovechild

Politicker

1

Inbound Sales Manager

B I N G O

Pachacuti

Politicker

10

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

You keep doing Discovery until you discover the signature on the contract.

ounceoz

WR Officer

1

US Sales Director

Dropping truth bombs right there

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

1

Rolling 20's all day

I like this!

SaaSguy

Tycoon

7

Account Executive

You think uncovering a business' needs is unnecessary to sell them complex software offerings? Is this a troll?

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

Hear me out, I am not saying it is unnecessary but don't you already know these issues from all your previous interactions with your target market? How much variability is there from prospect to prospect. Everyone believes their problem is unique but is it really? is your product's approach to solving the problem that different? Is it more important than the demo? I think not.

techsales

Politicker

5

Enterprise Account Executive

Sure, the root problems your prospects have might be the same at their base level. That being said, how different stakeholders at a company think about the problem, their motivations to solve said problems, their starting point on the journey to solve said problem, are all wildly different and require you to uncover this in discovery.

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

Totally agree. I am not implying Discovery is bad but most reps are horrible at it, spend way too much time asking the wrong questions and then the demo/pitch falls flat. Discovery should be targeted and meaningful with a direct purpose.

Sunbunny31

Politicker

4

Sr Sales Executive 🐰

So it's not "discovery" that's overrated, it's POOR discovery.

With which I would agree. If you're sticking to a script and NOT LISTENING to your customer about what is important to them, then it's going to be useless.

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

Yeah that is it. I have been witness to too many reps asking the same stupid questions over and over, calling it Discovery. These methods have been touted for years by sales gurus like Sandler, SPIN Selling. My original point if you looked at the LI in post is Discovery is not the most important part of the
sales process. IMO the demo/pitch is by far the most important. You can do the best Discovery in the world but if you can't translate that into a demo/pitch that resonates with the prospect you will fail. Good Discovery does not equal closed deals. Good Discovery is an important aspect of a great demo/pitch but demo/pitch is most critical in closing deals.

CaneWolf

Politicker

3

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

You're wrong unless you sell the world's most basic solution. You can't value sell without understanding what matters to them.

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

Fair enough. Not the case for me currently or across my entire career. Can you describe your discovery process and tell me why this is more important than the demo/pitch? Can you also truly say you find out new and interesting nuggets for each prospect that enhance your pitch and demo. Nuggets you didn't already know your solution solves? Again don't confuse qualification with Discovery.

CaneWolf

Politicker

1

Call me what you want, just sign the damn contract

I’ve only sold complex solutions that have competitors. These solutions and services have a bunch of different use cases. Without honing in on exactly the details, what’s important, etc., you’re throwing darts at a board and hoping it sticks. I routinely sold to companies in the same verticals with different needs. You could not nail the pitch without understanding why you were being evaluated.

Notmyrealname

Politicker

3

AE

Are you sure you don't work in marketing?

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

Positive

TennisandSales

Politicker

2

Head Of Sales

I agree doing discovery with the C suite may be a waste of their time.

What doe you consider to be a "long drawn out discovery process?"

ounceoz

WR Officer

1

US Sales Director

I think it is going to vary from company to company, but an hour call should be sufficient for most to understand their specific issues/problems. In my vast experience across multiple products/companies, most prospects are going to experience 90% of the same issues.

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

2

Rolling 20's all day

Ok hear me out... make your champion someone just below C-suite. So then after running discovery to find out how you can help, you can make a business case with actual ROI with their numbers - then go present this to the C-suite so they can sign off.
C-suite time is SUPER valuable and unless they are willing to keep giving you time, often the easier way to sell is to make it easy for them to buy!

Multi-threading is your friend.

DataSlangah

Politicker

2

SAE

Discovery is the most important step in the sales process. Few examples - Your deal stalls revert back to what they told you in discovery. Your prospect ghosts you for a couple of days, revert to the timeline uncovered in discovery. Your prospect bitches about price, revert back to the pain you are solving in discovery and the price that the prospect put on solving it.

Yes, knowing your product and what it does is crucial, but everybody thinks their problems are special, and if you can't let them describe their problem, they are never going to think that you care or can solve it.

butwhy

Politicker

1

Solutions Engineer

Tens of thousands of SEs just started screaming into the void.

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

LOL

FattySnacks

Politicker

1

Senior Account Executive

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

sketchysales

Politicker

1

Sales Manager

Discovery is part of the bigger journey. It's not only finding out needs but also planting seeds to help you close the deal later, it's not something you can skip. Can't agree in any way whatsoever

ounceoz

WR Officer

1

US Sales Director

I think many of you have missed the point. Not that Discovery is not important, clearly it is. IMO it is an ongoing process that happens during Qualification, Demo, and even in the closing phases. I would challenge all of you naysayers to be realistic in how much the info you gain from a long-drawn-out Discovery call really changes from prospect to prospect, is your solution to those problems so bespoke it requires lengthy discussion to craft a worthy demo/pitch? Does that mean you perform 0 Discovery of course not. Know your target market so well that your "discovery" becomes so targeted and meaningful that you can seamlessly weave it into your pitch/demo and to close the deal. Know how your solution solves the problems of your target market so well you speak their language and can validate their problems for them. I see way too many gurus pushing Discovery as a way to introduce emotion, to needlessly pick at the prospect across the table to uncover some deep held secret you have never heard before. Waste of time IMO. Use Discovery to validate with them what you already know keeps them up at night and get the details of how it specifically is a challenge for them and their org and you will be a killer every time. Call me all the names you want but my bloated salary, multiple Presidents Club, and fat commission checks tells me I know a few things. If you want to SPIN sell and Sandler your prospects to death be my guest, someone with more knowledge and the ability to pitch solutions to problems will come in and steal your deals, 10x your girl and put you on PIP.

Lioness

Good Citizen

1

Sr Field Enterprise Account Executive

If your prospects find discovery a waste of time, you're doing it wrong.

OldSaaSRep

Old School Bravo

1

Sr Enterprise Rep

Proper discovery is critical, especially when it comes to the justification. That said, discovery is relative to the complexity of your solution. If you're selling a simpler app then discovery is pretty straightforward, they either have the problem you solve or they don't. If you are selling complex, enterprise systems, you can't do enough discovery and it's an ongoing process. And without it, you'll never close the deal. Lastly, the process is very different at the C level than at the end-user level.

GratefulDad

0

Sr Director of Sales

Discovery is easily the most important phase of the sales process. The best listener, the person who REALLY understands the customer and their problem/s, will win more times than not against the rep who has the polished presentation but hasn't taken the time to truly listen and understand

GreenSide

Politicker

0

Sales manager

If you think discovery can be completed in an hour long call, that’s the issue. You are viewing discovery incorrectly.

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

Love this strategy!

Corpslovechild

Politicker

0

Inbound Sales Manager

Why don't you just come out and say that it's your first day in sales?

CuriousFox

WR Officer

1

🦊

👀🍿

ounceoz

WR Officer

0

US Sales Director

Thanks for the personal attack, been doing this for a very long time with great success. Closed many 7 figure deals in my career and working in 2 more right now. Of course, Discovery is important most reps do it very poorly as well as fail to know their buyers inside and out. Even in the most complex large deals, I have done I already know what their pain is and how we solve it. Discovery then becomes an exercise in getting specific for their org, mapping out my strategy, and ensuring my demo/pitch has the right people in attendance. My initial point was so many reps treat Discovery like a blank slate each time, which IMO is BS. Know your buyers and your product so well you can speak to what their problems are and then leverage discovery to drill down to the specific players, ROI, etc, etc.

PipelineKiller

0

Account Executive

How often are you going to get a CIO on a discovery call unless the company is 20 people? I'd imagine most meetings with a CIO, typically an economic buyer, would be confirmatory where'd you ensure POC alignment, that the project has been budgeted, that the project is a priority and needs to be completed by xyz date, agreement on desired business outcomes, and ROI metrics/ high level commercials.

Not_2_Salezy

Member

0

Program Manager

LoneMaverick

Executive

-1

Strategic Account Leader

Where do you work? I’m going to go work for your competition.

JDialz

Politicker

-1

Chief Operating Officer

As a fiduciary I am obligated to firmly disagree with the statement made in the post’s title.

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