A salesperson colleague shared a sad story that offered a great lesson: Discovery questions and topics need to align with your prospect players’ job titles. Here’s his story:
“After a great deal of work, I finally got a meeting with an executive at a key prospect. I had my discovery template ready to go and launched into my questions as soon as the call began.
The executive’s initial responses to my questions were clipped: ‘I don’t know,’ ‘You’ll need to ask my team,’ ‘That’s an IT issue,’ and similar. I was getting nowhere, and the executive was losing patience.
Thankfully, he offered me some great advice, saying, ‘Listen. The questions you’re asking me should be asked of the team running the workflows, and of IT for the infrastructure info. I can give you guidance regarding the importance of our project, and our objectives and timeline. I can help you by delegating you down and introducing you to the right players.
In return,’ he said, ‘I need to you report back to me with your key findings. Let me know if you run into any roadblocks along the way.’
What a terrific person…! That exec helped me realize that my discovery questions need to align with each level and job title. Prospect staff members are highly knowledgeable about their specific workflows. Middle managers deal with short-term challenges, such as problem identification and team resource allocation. Execs offer insights into the overarching goals, objectives, projects, strategies, and timelines.
I was asking staff-level questions of executives and middle managers! Now I have several discovery templates, each aligned to my prospects’ specific job titles. And guess what? Now I’m making my numbers… No, I’m consistently crushing my numbers every quarter!”
Hospital Analogy: Don’t see a podiatrist about an ear infection, don’t ask a gastroenterologist to set a broken bone, and don’t seek a diagnosis from a hospital administrator!
Solution? Discovery is dependent on job title as this story illustrates. “Speeds and feeds” are workflow topics; strategy is a subject for executives. Remember that “pain flows downhill” and “solutions flow uphill!”
This is #10 from The Dirty Dozen of Discovery Don’ts – you can find all twelve here! https://lnkd.in/evUnp8YV
You can find the full set of DO’s and DON’Ts in Doing Discovery:
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