Discovery: What Did We Learn?
- Mike Pinkel
- Jul 26, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: Nov 16
Early in my startup sales career, my manager asked me a chilling question after he sat in on one of my calls: “What did we learn?”
I thought… and I thought… and I realized that we hadn’t learned much at all.
My manager was making an important point in a nice way: I’d done hardly any discovery. In other words, I'd done little to investigate the prospective customer's situation so that we could sell specifically to their needs.
I was irritated at myself afterwards … I KNEW that I was supposed to ask questions before pitching!
Yet I hadn’t done it.
Why?
The Challenge
Many startups sales teams enter the discovery doom loop: They try to do thorough discovery, but they gradually do less and less until they hardly do any at all.
How does this happen?
It starts with good intentions: The company realizes that it's sales team isn't doing good discovery, so it has a brainstorming session and comes up with a long list of questions for reps to ask. Each seems useful, but boy are there a lot of them.
Sales reps hop on calls and try to get through them all.
But prospects get frustrated: Why so many questions?
Reps recoil at the frustration... and they aren't quite sure what to do with the information they get anyway.
So they do less and less discovery… and finally hardly any at all.
This kills deals.
Without good discovery, reps spend time pitching to prospects that will never buy.
They also do a worse job pitching to prospects that are promising. They can't speak to the prospect's needs because... they don't know much about what they are.
Three Steps to Great Problem Discovery
Want to fix this? Start by enabling the team to do good problem discovery.
If a prospect doesn't have problems you solve, you shouldn't pitch to them at all.
If they do, you need to understand them so you can sell to their specific situation.
To be sure, there are lots of other good areas to dive into apart from problem discovery, like buying process, technical ecosystem etc.
But problem discovery comes first. Many prospects see no reason to share information if they don't see how you can help. So start by uncovering problems and making an initial case that you can help. Come back to the other topics later on.
Great problem discovery is a team effort. Here's what has to happen:
The first step is to define the problems your product solves. Aim for three.
In a sales context, problems are a reason for taking action. Why does the prospect need to act? What about the problem naturally leads to your product as the best solution?
It turns out that defining problems is the most important part of discovery preparation even though we're not (yet) drafting potential discovery questions.
The best sales reps do discovery by gaining a rich understanding of the problems customers face and having a natural, thoughtful conversation about them that uncovers whether the prospect has the problems you solve and, if so, how they manifest in the prospect's situation.
The better they understand the problems, the better the conversations they can have.
So what makes a great problem definition? In P.S.I. Selling, we think of them as having four parts that together make a case for action and lead to your product:
Scope of Problem: Give the Problem a name and a definition
Existence of Problem: Provide evidence that the prospect has the Problem or that it's common for companies like theirs
Magnitude of Problem: Show that the Problem is worth solving
Insight About Problem: Offer an interpretation of the Problem that makes your product the logical way to address the Problem
When a prospect is persuaded of these four components of the Problem, they see that they have to take action and they're subconsciously looking for a Solution like yours. This sets you up to present your Solution in a way that naturally links the Problem:
The second step to great problem discovery is to craft a set of questions that explore each of the Problems. Crafting suggested questions helps get conversations started.
Your set of questions should go several layers deep for each Problem, uncovering not just whether the problem exists but how important it is and how it manifests in the prospect's situation. The questions track the information you've developed in your Problem definitions.
Here are four good types of questions (inspired by Neil Rackham's classic book SPIN Selling) that take us several layers deep into a Problem:
Relevance: Is this problem relevant to the prospect?
Problem: Do they have the problem?
Magnitude: How bad is it?
Benefit: How would it help if they can solve it?
This works out to three Problems * four questions per problem. That's just 12 questions.
Reps should almost always ask the first two questions about each problem; if they don't, they're not covering the bases.
Past that, reps should use their judgment. Sometimes the list of questions will be spot on. Sometimes prospects won't have the patience for more questions right at the start of a call.
The third step is for reps to use the information in subsequent conversations and refine it further with each interaction.
Discovery isn't a single event; it's continuous throughout the sales process:
Putting it into Practice
Let's explore how to apply each of these three steps.
Defining Problems
Your company should devote a lot of effort to defining Problems rather than leaving this to reps to figure out on their own. Good Problem definitions involve deep product knowledge, relate to your product's market positioning, and require strong desk research.
Here's an example of a well-defined Problem for Contactify, a hypothetical sales engagement company that we feature in many of our P.S.I. Selling materials.
I've highlighted each Problem-element so you can see where it appears in the example:
Scope of Problem: The Problem's name and definition
Existence of Problem: Proof that the prospect has the Problem or that it's common for companies like them
Magnitude of Problem: Evidence that the Problem is worth solving
Insight About Problem: An interpretation of the Problem that makes our product the most logical solution
Here's the text of the Problem:
Companies need to efficiently expand opportunity generation to ensure they have enough pipeline. Forrester reports that average B2B SaaS companies have only 2.5x pipeline coverage, almost 40% less than the recommended level of 4x pipeline coverage.
That could mean falling 40% short of your revenue targets and indicate that much of your go-to-market spend is wasted on salaries for salespeople who are not operating at capacity.
Most companies try to solve this problem by increasing outbound prospecting activity. That doesn’t work: Prospects ignore or block high-volume prospecting. Merely increasing activity wastes time and alienates prospects.
Teams need a way to increase effectiveness, not just scale activity.
For more tips on how to build messaging like this, check out our video on Sales Messaging.
Crafting Questions
Next, craft questions that test for the Problem and develop how it applies in the prospect's situation.
Try approaching this in two stages. First, quickly get the basics in place by enabling the team to present the Problems and confirm that they exist. Second, upgrade your discovery by crafting a rich set of open and closed questions for the team to use.
The Basics: Present and Confirm
You can get your team doing the basics of discovery within a few days using a present and confirm approach.
The first step is to build a Problem slide that lists out the three Problems your company solves. The slide typically contains only the scope of each Problem; it's usually too much to try to cram all the Problem elements onto the slide.
Next, train the team to begin calls by putting this slide up on the screen. They present the first Problem using the Problem definition as their talk track. Then, they confirm that the prospect has first Problem. If the prospect does, they ask them to expand on how that Problem impacts them. After that, they complete the same process for the second and third Problems.
The talk track looks something like this:
"I'd love to begin by sharing a few challenges we've seen companies like yours facing these days and see if any of these are affecting you. Once I have a sense of your situation, I'll be able to tailor our conversation to address the issues that matter most to you." The rep then puts the Problem slide up on the screen.
"One challenge we've seen is [explanation of Problem 1]."
"Is that something you've experienced?"
If the answer is yes, the rep says: "Tell me more about how that's impacted your company."
Next, the rep repeats this process for Problem 2 and Problem 3.
The Upgrade: Creating Open and Closed Questions
When you have more time, upgrade your discovery by building out a richer set of questions.
Open Questions
Here are some examples for our example Problem above:
Relevance: How are you generating pipeline today?
Problem: Are you on track to hit your pipeline generation goals?
Magnitude: How far off are you? What does that mean for your business?
Benefit: If you could consistently hit your pipeline generation goals, how would that help you?
Closed Questions
Next, craft some closed questions. These suggest an answer and incorporate your expertise about the Problem.
Here are some examples for our example Problem above:
Relevance: Most companies we talk to are using high-volume prospecting tools that are all about sending as many emails to prospects as possible. Is that the approach you’re currently using?
Problem: That approach isn’t working for many companies. Forrester reports that average B2B SaaS companies have only 2.5x pipeline coverage, almost 40% less than the recommended level of 4x pipeline coverage. Are you also noticing shortfalls in your pipeline generation?
Magnitude: Having that sort of gap can mean serious issues, like falling 40% short of your revenue targets. It could also indicate that much of your go-to-market spend is wasted on salaries for salespeople who are not operating at capacity. Are those concerns for you?
Benefit: For most companies, hitting pipeline generation targets leads to consistent revenue attainment and full utilization of sales resources. Do you think it would help you in similar ways?
Continuously Updating Discovery
Great discovery is about a feedback loop: Reps take the information they've gathered with their discovery questions and use it to customize their sales assets, they present those customized assets, get feedback, and repeat.
Customizing Assets
The first step to customizing assets is to collect the information from discovery and use it to reformulate the Problems.
In P.S.I. Selling, we refer to this as taking Product Themes (the value messages that are true about the product in general) and transforming them into Deal Themes (the value messages that apply to this deal specifically).
Let's look at an example using the Contactify Problem we defined above. Imagine that our sales rep did excellent discovery for her prospect, a hypothetical software company called Soft Corp.
She uncovered these facts:
Soft Corp has 2x pipeline coverage for next quarter; which is similar to the coverage they’ve had in past quarters
Last quarter, they hit only 50% of their revenue target and are on track for similar results for this quarter
They decided to increase marketing on paid ads by 40% for this quarter
They are not seeing a commensurate increase in pipeline generation
She uses those facts to update the Problem definition as follows:
Soft Corp needs to efficiently expand opportunity generation to ensure it has enough pipeline. Soft Corp currently has only 2x pipeline coverage, which is half the 4x pipeline coverage that experts recommend.
That could mean falling 50% short of your revenue targets for this quarter, as happened last quarter. Pipeline shortfalls are an ongoing challenge at Soft Corp and need to be addressed to get revenue generation back on track.
Soft Corp has tried increasing spending on paid ads but has not seen results. This is common: Paid ad spending has been becoming less effective over time across the industry.
What Soft Corp needs is a way to make its direct outbound outreach more effective to expand pipeline generation.
The next step is to update sales assets to reflect the Deal Themes. All of your company's assets should be editable so that sales reps can shape them to reflect what they learn in discovery:
Presenting Customized Assets and Getting Feedback
Sales reps need to take the information they gain and use it to shape subsequent conversations.
The most important way to do this is to present updated Summary Slides. These are a set of slides that summarize the Problems you solve, the Solutions you offer, and the Impacts you generate (P - S - I, hence P.S.I. Selling).
Problems lead to Solutions which lead to Impacts. Aim for three of each.
Most sales conversations begin with the rep sharing the Summary Slides:
Here's how the sequence works in practice: Prior to the call, the rep updates the Summary Slides to reflect what they learned in discovery on the last call. This naturally makes the slides somewhat more text-heavy, but that's OK with the prospect: They'll appreciate seeing that you are listening and shaping the conversation to speak to their needs.
The sales rep leads off the call by presenting the revised Summary Slides. This naturally reminds the sales rep to tailor the conversation to the prospect's situation rather than rehashing a scripted conversation.
Presenting the Summary Slides also provides a natural opportunity to get additional feedback. The rep can present material from the slides and ask simple questions like: "What resonates? Tell me more about that." or "What's off target? Why is that?"
Next, the rep should pivot the conversation to reflect that feedback, focusing more on the points that resonated and incorporating new information into the pitch so they can show how your product's value propositions apply in the prospect's context.
After the call, they can update their discovery based on what they've learned. They then repeat this process on the next call.
Repeated Discovery Refines Themes
Sales reps should repeat this process continuously throughout the deal. This ensures that the Themes have gone through multiple layers of revision and are well-targeted to the prospect's needs by the time the rep shares a proposal:
The Takeaway
Your team doesn’t have to fall into the discovery doom loop. Define the problems your product solves, build questions around them, and update discovery continuously.
That will set you on the path to sales success.
And it means you’ll learn something on every call!
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If you liked this article, have a look at our piece on Demos: Principles for Structure and Impact to see how to take the information you uncover in discovery and turn it into a persuasive software demonstration. You can also check out the P.S.I. Selling Content Page for more insights on sales communication, strategy, and leadership.
Want to build a sales process that proves value and a team that can execute? Get in touch.
For more about the author, check out Mike's bio.
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