How to Conduct Customer-Centric Discovery Calls

90% of salespeople run terrible discovery calls. At best, they "check the boxes." At worst, they annoy the hell out of buyers. Use these 5 tips for discovery calls that buyers actually THANK you for: 1. "Prime" the call for success. Bad discovery calls start with bad expectations. You do one thing (ask questions). Your buyer expects another (demo). Get the first 5 minutes of the meeting right: After a few min of small talk, say "Do you mind if we talk about the agenda?" Then ask: "Here's what I have in mind for this call. Lmk if you're thinking something different. This meeting will be successful if ________________. Does that feel right?" Fill in the blank with an objective. THEN set the agenda to get there: "The way we'll accomplish that is first by talking about X, then Y. Anything to add or remove?" Do that, and you're ahead of most sellers. 2. Match your questions to the buyer's journey Meet your buyer where they stand. If they're exploring solutions, ask: "What's driving you to explore this category?" If they're not, and they're still crystallizing their challenges, ask: "Let's talk about the top challenges in [you area] that would be an issue if you didn't solve in 6-12 months." The point? Your first few questions should "meet them where they stand." Match your questions with the buyer's journey stage. 3. Firm up the 'why' When your buyer gets off the Zoom call: - they have 100s of emails - they have missed phone calls - their Slack is lit up like a Christmas tree They'll forget about you. Unless you get to the 'need behind the need.' Ask this: "What's going on your in your business that's driving [challenge they shared] to be a priority? What's the origin story of how this challenge got prioritized?" That question is as close to magic as you'll find. 4. Banter on the root cause Bad salespeople do nothing but get information. Great salespeople *create value* in the sales cycle. Here's how: Help your buyer think through the 'root cause' of their problems. - Offer new perspectives - Share what you see with customers - Ask challenging (but tactful) questions Business problems are messy. They're hard to figure out. If you help them do that, you create value. 5. Quantify the value 'Quantifying value' is misunderstood. Most sellers: Do it because it serves you, the seller Great sellers: Do it because it serves the buyer When you help your buyer quantify the value: - you help them appreciate the full magnitude - you help them know what they can ignore - you help them set priorities Try asking: "What metric will improve the most if you solve this issue?" That will start the process. - What tips would you add for better discovery calls that buyers enjoy? P.S. I've kept a list of 39 questions that sell over the last 12 years. These come from watching 3,000 Gong calls, and running over 1,000 discovery calls myself. Here's the free list of 39 questions that sell: https://go.pclub.io/list

When I was a VP of sales, I helped take a SaaS startup from $1M ARR to $4M+ in 18 months. Here are 4 monumental things I focused on that works until today: 1. I became a CRM stalker: I knew that shooting from the hip at a startup can get you so far, but if you want to scale you need to rely on accurate data. Every new opportunity in our CRM was evaluated under a microscope to make sure we had healthy/accurate data. The point was to also use this data every quarter to run very specific reports, for example: → Which competitors do we mostly win against? → Why did customers leave them and go with us? → Who were the titles we were talking to? → What was the average sales cycle for deals won against this specific competitor? We then ran outbound campaigns against that data which resulted in new top-of-funnel pipeline. 2. We were the gatekeepers of our opportunities: Most salespeople will let anyone through and mark them as an opp for in their CRM. But what good is having a huge pipeline of deals with a <20% probability to close? Instead, we spent more time trying to disqualify a lead VS having happy ears and chasing them down. For example, if a lead was willing to pay but we knew they'd churn, we wouldn't close them (and clawbacks were non-existent because of this!) 3. Discovery was king: We would rather have a 20-minute discovery call than a 20-minute demo (even if it meant it increased our sales cycle by a bit). Discovery was our "deal GPS" and without going layers deep, we were blindly navigating deals. Some of the most important questions we asked always revolved around: → What is their problem? → How big of a problem is it for them? → Who's being impacted by that problem? → Who's evaluating a solution to it? → How are they picking a solution? → When do they need to find a solution and why? 4. Our demos were trailers, not movies: Most typical sales demos show prospects everything the product has to offer. But prospects don't care to see everything (nor are they paying attention) They just want to know if you can solve their problem fast. So we trimmed the fat, and treated our demos like a teaser to a movie. Instead of 1-hour demos, we cut our demos to 30-45 min max and showed only features that were problem solvers. The takeaways: 1. Be obsessed with capturing accurate data in your CRM 2. Learn to disqualify "opportunities in disguise" 3. Demo features that solve your prospect's problems (not your entire product). 4. Go layers deep in discovery (even if it means you extend sales cycle) I've used similar strategies to grow my SaaS sales consulting business to 6 figures in my first year of business (even during economic headwinds). P.S. 5,000+ salespeople are mastering their discovery for free with my top 24 disco questions: https://lnkd.in/eR69raD4

The number one mistake I've seen product teams make in conversations with customers / prospects in discovery calls is starting the conversation from the context of what their company's product does. Stop that. Start the conversation from the context of that person's highest priorities and goals. It is YOUR job to connect those priorities and goals to what your product does. Not theirs. Will you hear about a lot of stuff that your product will never be able to accommodate? Sure. But you will also hear about needs that help you think outside the box about value that your product CAN add... and just isn't today. THESE are the insights that lead to concepts that increase win rates, adoption, and stickiness.

Sales don’t happen without salespeople. But what’s the right way to sell? There are a few parts to the sales process. How to get leads is a conversation for another day. For sales/discovery calls, I use Alex Hormozi CLOSER framework. 👉 CLARIFY why they’re on the call Ask question. -Why are they on the call? -Why now? -What would a successful outcome look like? 👉 LABEL their problem (Chris Voss) “From what you told me it seems like you struggle with X.” If there’s no problem, there’s no motivation to buy. 👉 OVERVIEW the pain What have they done in the past? Why didn’t it work? 👉 SELL the vacation Never sell the process. Sell the outcome. Delta doesn’t sell the flight or the security lines or dealing with crying babies onboard. They sell the beautiful destination. 👉 EXPLAIN away concerns Here I use Josh Braun's ideas. If they have ‘objections’ either it’s the truth or they’re having trouble making a decision. Any objection that keeps coming up should be memorized. Know how to handle it. 👉 REINFORCE the sale People back out after they buy. (Buyers Remorse) Send them a personalized letter or have the boss call them for a minute. Make them feel like they’ve made the right decision. THIS IS NOT A SCRIPT. These are concepts to be memorized. These are stepping stones toward a sale. Obviously there’s a lot more nuance to each sale but these are the basic steps that need to be taken. We’re helping prospects make the right decision. If you use this with bad intentions, you’re manipulating your prospects for you’re own financial gain. This has worked wonders for me. Do you use any frameworks for sales?

This week for #mentormonday, I opted to write a number of posts about people who I have worked with exmplify attributes that make sellers significantly better. The first attribute that I wrote about was a relentless focus on moving a deal forward. Nothing drives me crazier when I listen to a Gong call and at the end of the call the seller says something like "what should be our next step?" The problem with saying this, while it seems like it makes sense, it a.) shows a general lack of understanding of your own process and b.) assumes that your contact knows how to buy your product (or buys anything). Neither scenario is one that you want to leave to fate. First, if you don't know your sales process and don't have a good understanding of how your best customers buy your product, figure that out ASAP.   Understand what the process is for every step along the way and figure out how your best customers actually buy your product. How did they evaluate? How many competitors did they look like? What was their legal process like? What was their buying criteria? You have to know all that before you can talk about next steps. Next, and this is something that I learned from Kris Duggan - At the start of every single meeting, walk through an agenda (today we are going to talk about X, Y, & Z) and then explain: - If you like what you see, I believe that our next steps should be: 1.) Whatever it is... 2.) Whatever it is... 3.) Whatever it is... If it is a discovery call and I'm selling Cloudinary, I might say something like "If you like what you see here today, at the end of the call, I'm going to ask that we 1.) get a few more stake holders involved in a high level demonstration; 2.) have a discussion about the ROI of this project, and 3.) get a security call on the books with your team." Then, when we get to the end of the call, a few things happen. Either they like what you said and are willing to schedule these calls and will probably suggest a few others or they will tell you that it isn't for them and future meetings aren't necessary. Both are wins. If they say something like 'This is interesting, but I need to think about it, talk about it, socialize it, etc.' - you should say "great, I'm going to put 10-minutes on our calendar for 1-week from today to get your feedback and see if it is a fit". Under no circumstances, do not leave that meeting without getting a well defined next meeting on the calendar. Try this structure on your next few calls, I think that you'll notice a big difference in how your deals move forward. Good luck and let me know in the comments how it works.

Ending my discovery calls by “empowering the no” doubled my win rate for qualified pipeline. Here’s what I’d say: “Based on our conversation today, we might be able to help you improve [outcome]. If we continue the conversation, we’ll go deeper into how we drive that outcome through [use case]. The last thing we want to do is waste either of our time pursuing a non-priority. Is [outcome] enough of a priority to warrant more discussion?” If my discovery hadn’t found a significant priority, I’d rather end the conversation after one call than lose the deal after six. Giving the customer an easy out ensured I only continued conversations with people that felt we could help them solve a big problem. And solving big problems led to big win rates.