picklerick

Account Executive

What are some good discovery questions to ask to identify the business impact of your solution?

Noobie here, Ive noticed I get most of the sfdc builds populated, pain, why now etc however ive struggled to truly understand the business impact of what our solution can offer. What are some good questions to ask around this to get prospects to spill the beans?

☁️ Software Tech

☑️ Qualification Calls

15 comments

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JuicyKlay

Celebrated Contributor

What happens to the business if you don’t get our solution or one like it?

RandoSalesGuy

Opinionated

This. The more I learn about this process, this is the most important question. None of the other questions matter if they can't pivot this back to what they're getting out of my(any) solution.

CoorsKing

WR Officer

Retired King of the Coors Knights

- How are you doing xyz today?
- What pain/challenges do you have with xyz today?
- Describe your ideal state
- What is prompting you to make a change now? (what is the urgency)
- What is the timeline for a fix?
- Is this a budgeted project?
- What other solutions are you looking at to get to your ideal state?
- How will you go about testing to determine what solution is the best fit?
- Once you determine which solution to go with, who needs to sign off to approve a purchase?

That is more or less my line of questioning for random calls my SDR sets with no context

Rallier

Politicker

SDR Manager and Consultant

You should look up SPIN. It sounds pretty relevant to what you’re asking

poweredbycaffeine

WR Lieutenant

☕️

Check out this article: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/gpct-sales-qualification

sfdc

Catalyst

Sales Manager, Enterprise

Start from the top:
1. What is the CEO asking the business to achieve. E.g 12% revenue growth yoy

2. What is your key stakeholder measured on and how is that tied to the ceo objective.
e.g if you’re selling to a head of e-commerce it might be “grow online sales by 8%”

3. what are the initiatives that your key stakeholder and their team are executing to enable 8% growth in online sales.
e.g it could be adding product recommendations to the checkout process to increase conversion.

4. Pinpoint and be able to clearly articulate how your solution can enable them on one or more of these initiatives.

if you do this correctly and can see how each objective enables the next, you’re truly selling on immediate needs and challenges that the CEO and c-suite care about.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Can you give us a vauge idea of what you sell?

picklerick

Executive

Account Executive

iPaaS

mitts2

Politicker

Account Executive

Some variation of "ultimately, what are you optimizing for?"

I use some form of this question ALL THE TIME because it translates to a ton of different parts of the sales cycle. Could be intro / discovery, price negotiation, legal review, etc.

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Do you actually say "optimizing" though?

mitts2

Politicker

Account Executive

Occasionally. I realize it’s very buzz wordy but in my industry it generally gets the job done. Plug in what ever feels comfortable but that’s the general premise. You could just say “what do you care about?”, “what are your priorities right now?”, “what’s top of mind?” It’s all basically the same thing

softwaresails

Politicker

Sales Manager

During the demo process I like to ask questions that can help quantify time savings or money savings.

Find out how much time they will save by using your product.

Find out how much money they will save by using your product.

HoldemCaulfield

Politicker

Sales Training & Enablement

TED Questions are always great. They stand for "Tell me, Explain to me, Describe to me..." as they really get the prospect to open up so you can later be able to map your solution to the process or lack of process and the associated business pains that they may have in their org.

This method also makes the conversation about THEM and not YOU. You'll also have more success in getting them to vocalize process or pain as they talk through the status of the current state.

#2 here:

https://www.forcemanagement.com/seller-blog/five-things-that-will-help-you-uncover-new-business-opportunities

CoastLife

Good Citizen

Large Enterprise Sales

Focus on the impact of doing nothing... Status quo. Get them to explain current state, challenges. Get specific examples. Then dig in on why it is a problem. Ask them outright what the impact is.

Justatitle

Big Shot

Account Executive

- what are you doing today (why are we talking is something not working)
- how does this impact you in your day-to-day now, how does this impact the business currently
- are you spending more time in this area as opposed to others?
- what are the positive outcomes you want to achieve with this?

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picklerick

What are some good discovery questions to ask to identify the business impact of your solution?

15 comments

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