Navigating Sales Discovery With Two Key Questions ( And a Peek into Your Sales Discovery GPS!)

We will get to one of the questions today!

First - Spinning or a Building Block

This is part of an ongoing series that builds on our last article. In the previous Sales Edge piece, we rolled out tips on avoiding eye rolls from prospects and highlighted the chaos that ensues when sales teams lack clarity in discovery.

Now, let's talk about my four-year-old daughter. She has a thing for swearing (no idea where she gets it from) and enjoys standing in our living room, spinning around until she falls over. Despite my advice to avoid the dizziness, she persists.

Reps in discovery are doing something similar—spinning in circles without progress. Why? Because they're stuck in the same routine, expecting different results.

Instead of fumbling for ways to sell to prospects, let's take a step back and lay some groundwork.

Permission To Get Into Your Product

In the last article, we emphasized that the primary goal in discovery is to get the customer, buyer, or prospect to let you help them—without fixating on the sale. We closed by urging you to immerse yourself in your product.

Now, think about your product. Got it all in your mind? Great!

Ask yourself: What information do I need to collect for a diagnosis?

Notice, we haven't sold anything, haven't gotten on a call, and aren't even talking to anyone. We're laying the foundation.

Knowledge Collection

Our role is to gather knowledge for an informed diagnosis during discovery. The term 'diagnosis' comes from the Greek "gnosis," meaning knowledge.

So, what information do we need to collect in order to be able to diagnose? (that's the million dollar question; so I repeated it from above)

Keeping your product in mind, ponder what happens if someone (an organization) doesn't have your product/services. Make a list—what breaks or goes missing in an organization? What processes or tools are flawed? Describe how the prospect talks about the problem, using their words.

These clues help you understand what to start to look for so we can identify if there is in fact, a business problem!

But you have to take the time to start to write it all down, so you can synthesize this information into one awesome three columned chart :) (IYKYK).

Do not pass go and have your team go into discovery until you ask yourself/our team: what information do we need to collect in order to be able to diagnose?

Stay tuned for the next part - where we will dive into your final destination and some ouchies when creating your discovery GPS.