An intriguing discovery dimension is learning about your prospects’ physical environment, and it can be differentiating.
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
– Marcel Proust
Years ago, I sold software for a company that supported pharmaceutical pre-clinical research, and many of our users were chemists. While our software never saw a test-tube, it was extremely helpful for me to see the chemists’ laboratories.
I would schedule a face-to-face visit that spanned a few hours with the bulk of the time spent in a conference room discussing the chemists’ situations and needs, followed by demonstrations of our software.
Towards the close of these meetings I would say, “Hey, can you show me around your labs?”
The chemists were delighted that I was interested, and they would typically go into animated detail about their equipment and their lab facilities (“Here’s our new NMR – ain’t it a beauty?”).
In return, I gained wonderful insights into their processes and environment: the breadth and relative age of their instrumentation, how their labs were laid out, how modern (or not) they were, whether their offices were immediately adjacent to the labs or far away, and a range of other factors.
Additionally, I often had good views of their offices, desks and office walls (many of which were glass, with diagrams of the chemical structures and reactions being researched), the journals they read, output examples on their desktops, and more.
This all contributed to a much richer understanding of why they needed our software, what kinds of problems they were seeking to solve, and how they were going about their current workflows and processes.
Furthermore, the chemists felt I gained a deeper understanding of their situation, certainly much more than I could have gleaned from the inside of a conference room or Zoom session. In fact, after one such visit, the prospect told me that he preferred to purchase software from me, rather than my competitor (whose software was, frankly, a bit slicker), specifically because I had asked to see the labs…!
Moral: Discovery has many dimensions, both seen and unseen!
You’ll find more on discovery of your prospects’ physical environment starting on page 71 in Doing Discovery: https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/
If you missed some of these posts, you’ll find another dozen waiting for you at https://greatdemo.com/blog/
And NONE of these posts are in “Suspending Disbelief: A Collection of Sales, Presales, and Marketing Stories (and Lessons Learned).” These public posts are teasers! You can find this gem here: https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy
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