Four Stages of Competence in Discovery

Where are you and your team?

 

For example, are you aware of and apply the following skills?

 

-       Ranging Probes

-       Expansion Questions

-       Biased Questions

-       Provocative Questions

-       Empathy and Quid Pro Quo

-       Vision Reengineering

-       The Curse of Knowledge

 

The classic Four Stages are particularly apropos for doing discovery:

 

Stage 1 – Unconsciously Incompetent:

 

They don’t know what they don’t know. Many (most?) sales, presales, and customer success folks are in this category but are unaware…!

 

 

Stage 2 – Consciously Incompetent:

 

They understand they need to do better or operate differently, but don’t know what or how to accomplish this.

 

 

Stage 3 – Consciously Competent:

 

They know what to do but have to consciously think to execute properly.

 

 

Stage 4 – Unconsciously Competent: 

 

They do the right things without extra thought.

 

 

Where are you and your team on this spectrum?

 

 

If you’d like to assess yourself and improve, here are resources to draw from:

 

-       Want some easy-to-consume nuggets? Browse the blog: https://greatdemo.com/blog/

 

-       Want to go a bit deeper? Here are a few good articles to explore:

 

Assess Your Discovery Skills Level

https://greatdemo.com/assessing-discovery-skill-levels-how-does-your-team-rate/

 

Uncovering Critical Business Issues – What, Why, and How

https://greatdemo.com/uncovering-critical-business-issues-what-why-and-how/

 

Let’s Talk About Value – Uncovering the Delta

https://greatdemo.com/lets-talk-about-value-uncovering-the-delta/

 

Critical Dates – Prevent Prospect Procrastination: A Never Stop Learning! Article

https://greatdemo.com/critical-dates-prevent-prospect-procrastination/

 

Doing Discovery with Your Prospects’ Executives

https://greatdemo.com/doing-discovery-with-your-prospects-executives/

 

-       Want to dig into the full methodology at your own pace? Grab a copy of “Doing Discovery” here:

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

 

-       Prefer podcasts? Here you go!

 

“Doing Discovery” SE Book Club – What’s YOUR Discovery Skills Level?

https://greatdemo.com/doing-discovery-se-book-club-whats-your-discovery-skills-level/

 

Demologue Podcast – Discovery, Menus, Automated Demos and More!

https://greatdemo.com/demologue-podcast-discovery-menus-automated-demos-and-more/

 

In the Spotlight Podcast – Doing Discovery

https://greatdemo.com/in-the-spotlight-podcast-doing-discovery/

 

SaaS Backwards Episode 155 – You’re Probably Doing Discovery Wrong—And It’s Costing You Deals

https://greatdemo.com/saas-backwards-episode-155-youre-probably-doing-discovery-wrong-and-its-costing-you-deals/

 

-       Ready to invest in yourself or your team? Instructor-led training can be found here:

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

Presales: What’s Your Cultural Ecotone?

 

“An ecotone is a transition area between two biological communities, where two communities meet and integrate.“

 

Picture this: A pelican crashes into the ocean just off the beach, drawn by an abundance of surf fish, while a pair of river otters forage on the shore just above the water. Plants seen nowhere else thrive in this unique salt-sweet environment.

 

Ecotones, such as coastal and transitional mountainous regions, are richly diverse, where plants and animals exploit the unique opportunities for food, shelter, and social engagement.

 

Presales, as a role, inhabits a similar richly diverse cultural ecotone at the confluence of prospects, customers, sales, products, and technology. Prospect and customer size, vendor size, market vertical, technology, change adoption, product complexity, use cases, and product life cycles are just a few of the dimensions that define a particular presales cultural ecotone. 

 

It is by doing discovery that you can characterize your own specific space.

 

While customer success folks, salespeople, and marketing teams may each enjoy a portion of this overall ecotone, it is presales that has the opportunity to live in and fully explore this unique niche!

 

How would you describe the characteristics and dimensions of your specific cultural ecotone?

Presales Rising Star?

Whether you are in your first month, first year, or first decade, 

if you are pursuing best practices or establishing new ones you are a Rising Star!

 

Presales managers: nominate your best performers!

Salespeople: nominate your best presales partners!

Presales individual contributors: nominate yourself or your colleagues!

 

And consider: everyone who is nominated is already a winner:

 

Being nominated is an honor; 

Applying is an act of personal growth

And an investment in your future!

 

https://demoboost.com/presales-rising-star 

How Discovery on the Fly Results in Buying It Back

 

“What do you think of this feature?” inquired the rep.

 

“Sorry, don’t need it…” replied the prospect.

 

“OK, let me show you another really cool function…” said the rep as they dove further into their software. “Can you see yourself using this?”

 

“No, we don’t have that use case…,” said the prospect.

 

As the “discovery on the fly” demo went on, this exchange occurred more and more. 

 

At the end of the meeting, the rep asked, “So, what do you think?”

 

The prospect replied, “It’s way more than we need. Do you have a scaled-back version?”

 

“No,” said the rep, “It’s all one package. You get everything…”

 

“Then it’s too much!” was the prospect’s response. 

 

This was part of the dialogue in a recorded call. The rep ended up offering a large discount to offset the prospect’s concerns: Yet another example of the woes of Buying It Back!

 

Many vendors who do “discovery on the fly” end up Buying It Back and it happens far too frequently.

 

The tendency of vendors to fall into this self-made trap is huge, partly because he temptation to dive into your software is extremely high once it has been launched. It takes enormous discipline to avoid showing capabilities that the prospect doesn’t need or want (or be willing to pay for!).

 

There are two solutions to avoid Buying It Back when doing Discovery on the Fly:

 

1.     Introduce your capabilities in the form of a question before showing them.

 

If your prospect responds positively, then you can say, “Well, we have that capability – would you like to see it?”  

 

On the other hand, if your prospect’s response is, “No, we don’t really want that….” or “We can’t see situations where that would be valuable,” then you simply move on. Don’t show that capability!

 

Note that if the negative response happens too frequently, you are still at risk of Buying It Back, since your prospect will begin to assume that all of these capabilities will be in the software they purchase from you, if they move forward.

 

2.     Use a Vision Generation Demonstration instead of trying to do traditional Discovery on the Fly. A Vision Generation Demo is designed to satisfy the prospect’s desire to “see what’s possible” while moving the prospect (gently, yet firmly!) into a discovery conversation. (See Chapter 11 in Great Demo! for details.)

 

The subsequent discovery dialog should yield the list of Specific Capabilities your prospect wants and needs, enabling you to present a Technical Proof Demo that is tailored precisely and avoid Buying It Back. (Chapters 5-9 in Great Demo!)

 

Solution Resources:

 

Do Discovery before the demo!

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

 

Apply the Menu Approach

https://greatdemo.com/the-menu-approach-a-truly-terrific-demo-self-rescue-technique-3/ 

 

Great Demo! Chapters 5-9 and 11

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

Buying It Back: Some Good News!

 

“What they don’t see won’t hurt you!”

 

There’s a remarkable difference between software and physical products: In software demos, unwanted or unnecessary features can be invisible!

 

In the world of video and movies they say, “If the camera doesn’t see it, then it didn’t happen…” Interestingly, the same is true for demos. If the prospect isn’t shown capabilities then they don’t exist, at least in their minds.  

 

Clearly, this is one of the most important objectives of doing discovery: to understand the Specific Capabilities needed and desired by the prospect. This gives you the list of what should be presented in a demo and the list of capabilities to ignore and leave out.

 

When you execute effective discovery, you identify exactly which features are “must have” and “nice to have” and plan to show those in your demos. Leaving everything else out of the demo makes the remaining, unwanted capabilities invisible. 

 

What you don’t show, they don’t know!

 

What about value?

 

Most vendors believe that “The more capabilities; the more value…” This is part of the reason vendors traditionally try to pack as many features and functions into demos as possible. These vendors believe that by showing more, the perceived value of their software should similarly increase.

 

Instead, they are buying it back with every additional click!

 

This is why traditional “overview” and “end-to-end” demos put you at risk. And organizations that train customer-facing staff to learn their standard or “Gold” demos perpetuate the problem. These demos ignore discovery and emphasize vendors’ perceived differentiators, Buying It Back every time!

 

Solutions?

 

Do Discovery!

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

 

Apply Inverted Pyramid!

https://greatdemo.com/why-structure-demos-like-a-news-article/ 

 

Employ Great Demo!

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

 

Are You Buying It Back? An Analogy!

You are in a restaurant and ask for a glass of wine. Your waiter brings the glass and a full bottle of wine to your table, places the glass in front of you and starts to fill the glass. You are gratified when they fill it right to the top. 

 

You are very surprised, however, when they continue to pour! The wine overflows onto the table and then splashes onto the floor. The entire bottle has been emptied, but the only portion you can consume is contained in the glass.

 

What would you say if the waiter charged you for the full bottle?

How Do You Know When You’re Buying It Back?

 

If you’ve ever heard these objections, you were probably Buying It Back:

 

-       “We don’t want the Cadillac; we just need a Chevy!”

 

-       “It’s way more than we need!”

 

-       “We don't need all the bells and whistles.”

 

-       “We're looking for the bare bones.”

 

-       “A workhorse, not a show horse.”

 

-       “We need utility, not luxury!”

 

(Folks in Europe, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific, what are the phrases you hear?)

 

So, if you get these responses after (or worse, during!) your demos, consider how your prospects view their desires vs your feature set.

 

In a traditional demo (and in any demo done without sufficient discovery), each capability you show falls into one of the following categories:

 

-       Must have

-       Nice to have

-       Neutral

-       Don’t need it

-       Really don’t need it

 

The “must have” and “nice to have” capabilities are the Specific Capabilities desired by your prospect. But what about “Neutral,” “Don’t need it,” and “Really don’t need it”? Each time your prospect sees these in your demo they think, “Well, I don’t need that and I certainly don’t want to pay for it.”

 

And since they have just seen these demonstrated, they know that they will be paying for these features as part of the license fee. One or two small capabilities isn’t much of a risk, but when this list grows larger then prospects get concerned.

 

It’s even worse when vendors highlight capabilities as key differentiators as particularly important or high value, but the prospect has the opposite opinion.

 

Solutions?

 

Do Discovery!

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

 

Apply Inverted Pyramid!

https://greatdemo.com/why-structure-demos-like-a-news-article/ 

 

Employ Great Demo!

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