How to AVOID Discovery Feeling Like an Interrogation

 

"A conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue."

– Truman Capote

 

Discovery should be perceived by your prospects as a two-way conversation, where both parties take away useful information.

 

A long time ago in a country far away, my boss (the regional head of sales) and I were in a discovery conversation with a prospect at a large Swiss pharmaceutical company. The prospect was the head of research computing, and we were working to sell our new cheminformatics flagship product into his organization.

 

The three of us were face-to-face in our prospect’s office, sitting beside a small table. I’d started the conversation with demographics questions, and, at a logical point, we began to explore pain and impact.

 

My boss and I had been trading questions which, in retrospect, must have really felt like an inquisition, because as we continued, our prospect began to twist himself into a pretzel-like knot. He wound his legs together about as tightly as one might do without self-injury. As this progressed, he folded his arms – but not across his chest – he folded his arms tightly above and behind his head!

 

Obviously, he was not comfortable! And intriguingly, in our debrief afterwards, my boss and I both believed that our prospect’s actions were involuntary: he didn’t realize he was showing severely strained body language.

 

It was clear that we needed to change our approach, and this is when we realized that there needed to be a kinder, gentler, balanced approach to discovery where both parties learn things and enjoy the experience.

 

Moral: Make discovery a real conversation by giving as well as gathering information!

 

 

Learn how to give (and not just gather) on page 199 in "Doing Discovery": https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

  

And you’ll find 35 additional story gems in “Suspending Disbelief: A Collection of Sales, Presales, and Marketing Stories (and Lessons Learned)” here: https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy 

Cooks, Chefs, Discovery and Demos

 

Are You a Cook or a Chef? Insights into Personal Growth

 

With respect to doing discovery and delivering demos, are you a cook or a chef?

 

What’s the difference? Cooks follow recipes, chefs create recipes! Cooks specialize in one or a few functions; chefs manage the entire menu and kitchen operation.

 

In doing discovery and delivering demos, most customer-facing team members are like cooks: They execute the prescribed skills and follow the established processes over and over, seeking to achieve consistent, high performance. Their objective is to minimize mistakes and follow best practices.

 

A few folks, on the other hand, are like chefs seeking to improve processes and pursue new methods. They generate and test new ideas, exploring new dimensions and going beyond existing boundaries. They welcome making mistakes and the information and experiences that those experiments yield.

 

We need both types; in fact, we need many more cooks than chefs!

 

 

This is the introduction to an intriguing article on personal growth:

https://greatdemo.com/cooks-chefs-discovery-and-demos/

 

Do you perceive yourself as a cook or a chef – and what are your aspirations? Let us know!

The Gruesome Anatomy of a One-Hour Overview Demo

 

Warning! Gruesome content ahead!

 

Here’s the rough but strangely consistent timeline for far-too-many overview demos:

 

00:00:  Fumbling with Zoom/Teams/Google Meet

 

00:04:  Introductions, but one-sided

 

00:07:  Corporate overview presentation (gag!)

 

00:18:  Product overview presentation (yawn)

 

00:26:  Actual demo, including:

 

1.     Slide that says “Demo”

 

2.     Opening statement “We planned on 45 minutes for the demo, but we only have 30 minutes left so we’ll go really fast”

 

3.     Followed by “But we want this be interactive, so please stop me if you have any questions”

 

4.     Followed by a firehose delivery from the presenter speaking non-stop for way too long!

 

5.     Interspersed with “Any questions so far?”  

 

6.     And “Does that make sense?”

 

7.     Overview of navigation elements

 

8.     Definition of vendor jargon, acronyms and product names

 

9.     Comment that everything is configurable

 

10.  Comment that everything can drill-down to the underlying data

 

11.  Details on how to set up the application

 

12.  A run-through of the workflow

 

13.  With exploration of as many “if” and “or” options as possible

 

14.  Frequent references to “Remember when I…?” (that aren’t remembered)

 

15.  Zippy Mouse Syndrome and a tiny mouse cursor 

 

16.  Zero use of annotation tools

 

17.  “Piling on” of a feature description by the salesperson

 

18.  Pre-answering questions that the vendor frequently hears (aka Premature Elaboration)

 

19.  Driving “into the weeds” by a random question

 

20.  Cutting off prospect questions before the prospect finishes 

 

21.  Not confirming that the prospect’s question was addressed

 

22.  A rapid verbal description of reporting and dashboard capabilities

 

23.  Including “we have over 600 canned reports/dashboards…”

 

24.  Discussion of report and dashboard creation

 

25.  Repeated comment that everything can drill-down

 

26.  Repeated comment that everything is configurable

 

27.  Showing data that is obviously fake

 

28.  Comment that “we didn’t have time to show you everything…”

 

29.  No interim summaries

 

30.  No stories to improve retention of key ideas

 

31.  No analogies or metaphors, either

 

32.  No final summary

 

33.  And, of course, absolutely no communication of value!

 

00:58   Salesperson asks, “What do you think?”

 

-       Prospect replies, “I’m not sure…”

 

-       Salesperson immediately offers a “deep dive” demo and a free POC!

 

Whew. Frightening, gruesome and remarkably common!

 

How do your team’s overview demos compare?

 

Solutions?

 

Grab and consume a copy of Doing Discovery – that’s the best starting point!

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

 

Next, read or listen to Great Demo!

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C9SNKC2Y/

 

Even better, attend a Great Demo! or Doing Discovery Workshop

https://greatdemo.com/training/ 

Overview Demo? A True Story

 

“What’s he doing?”

 – Whispered my colleague in my ear

 

I was a third party joining a demo presented by a partner vendor to a large pharma prospect in Basel, Switzerland. The lead prospect player was the Head of Research IT, and he had assembled his team of a dozen folks for the demo, held in one of the prospect’s large conference rooms.

 

It was billed as an overview demo and was scheduled for two hours. My organization was present as we had a significant part to play, and we had the last twenty minutes in the meeting for our segment.

 

The vendor salesperson started the meeting by introducing their team and then began a corporate overview presentation. After ten minutes of slides, the Head of Research IT stood up, walked a few paces to the wall of the room, and methodically began to bang his head against the wall…!

 

Everyone in the room gasped as they watched this taking place. My colleague whispered, “What’s he doing?”

 

I responded, “I think he’s suffered through so many of these that he’s giving our partner a clear message: ‘Stop!’”

 

I asked the head-banger, in my limited Swiss German, “Would you like them to get to the software?”

 

He answered, “Ja, bitte…!”

 

The meeting went forward reasonably smoothly from there, but we all certainly learned a lesson!

 

Moral? Don’t inflict corporate overview presentations on your prospects. Do the Last Thing First, instead!

For Every Generalization...

For every generalization there is a population of meaningful of exceptions. (Including this one!)

A Story a Day – A Rewarding Strategy!

 

What a great idea…

 

A colleague shared his intriguing strategy for consuming Suspending Disbelief: A Collection of Sales, Presales, and Marketing Stories (and Lessons Learned): He reads a story a day as a reward for doing a day’s work!

 

Most of the stories take just a few minutes to read and relish. 

 

And with 35 stories, you’ve got enough for over a month of “rewards” – or 7 work weeks, if you take weekends off.

 

Spoiler alert, however, the last story in the book may provide you with multiple rewards…!

 

Enjoy! https://tinyurl.com/yc7rsrmy 

 

 

And for those of you who recently purchased a pile of Suspending Disbelief, I’d be happy to join a team call or book club to answer questions or provide more insight into the stories!

THIS Is a Good Discovery Call!

 

(Compare this one with the poor discovery call posted previously.)

 

But before you read further, examine the Gong recording – the call was ~55 minutes long.

 

What do you see?

 

First, the Talk:Listen ratio (Vendor:Prospect) is terrific at 34:66%.

(The blue-purple component is the vendor; the two red components are the prospect players.)

 

Next, note the number of speaker switches: It’s a real conversation!

 

Listening to the call, this vendor leveraged many of the skills in “Doing Discovery,” including using “Anything else?” to enable the prospect to expand on their situation. The vendor also explored the prospect’s culture, uncovering several key attributes that mapped to Value Realization Events. What a delight!

 

Additionally, the vendor provided several quid pro quo comments and information that made the call productive for the prospect, as well as the vendor.

 

And this vendor closed the call using one my favorite discovery questions, “Is there anything I haven’t asked that I should be asking?”

 

This discovery call was a thing of beauty! 

 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the vendor in this discovery call won the business.

The vendor in the previous post did not!

 

So, is this a good discovery call? Yes, indeed!

 

Now: how do YOUR discovery calls compare?

 

This vendor rep was operating at Level 8 of the 10 levels of discovery skills. (There is always room for improvement…!)

 

Want to uplevel YOUR discovery skills? Here’s how:

https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Discovery-Important-Enablement-Processes/dp/B0B8RJK4C2/

 

Even better, take a Doing Discovery Workshop to 

accelerate your skills learning and application!

https://greatdemo.com/training/workshops/doing-discovery/