5 BIGGEST LIES About Discovery In Sales

Foreign everybody, welcome to another episode of the Getting to Club podcast. Today we're going to talk about discovery and the five biggest lies that are being told about discovery today. And here's the deal. Discovery is both the most popular topic in sales and also the least understood. Okay? 80 or 90% of SaaS salespeople think think that they're doing discovery, right? And effectively 80% of their bosses disagree though. Okay? If you go ask these two groups of people, the reps and their bosses, how good they are at discovery compared to like other sales organizations, they have very different perspectives. So today I'm going to talk about five lies that are causing that kind of incongruity behind how salespeople think they're doing and how their bosses think they're doing and see if we can close that gap. So here's the first lie number one. The point of discovery is to use what you learn in a demo. Okay, that's actually wrong. That is basic discovery and it leads to discovery calls that buyers hate. Right? Because if that's your mindset, if your mindset is the point of discovery is to gather the information you need to then craft a great demo or presentation or whatever, that means you are doing a selfish act through discovery. You're just gathering information to empower yourself to then present. Okay, the best discovery calls actually create value for the buyer. They walk out of the discovery call better than how they walked in. So I'll give you one simple example. Here at P Club, when we sell our platform to businesses, our first call, we don't even call them discovery calls. That's effectively what they are. But we don't refer to them as discovery calls. We call them sellers. Skill, analysis. Okay, so a buyer comes to us, we run a 30 minute session where we kind of monitor and ask them questions about different skill gaps in their organization. And they frequently tell us that was an insanely. Maybe not insanely, but they tell us that was a valuable session because it helped them crystallize their thinking. And so what to do with this is change your mindset about discovery. And is there a way you can create value for your buyer during this discovery process rather than just give you information that's going to quote, unquote, arm yourself to demo later. Okay, big lie number two. Discovery is about finding a need and filling it. Okay, that's also wrong. This leads to a few surface level discovery questions followed by a feature dump, which is what most discovery calls are. The best salespeople don't uncover a need. They uncover the need behind the need. And I can't tell you how big of a difference that makes. I know we're just using semantics here, but in reality, it shows up very different. Great salespeople ask follow up questions like, stop me if I'm overstepping. But what's going on in your business that's driving all of this to be a priority to begin with? Okay? That's how they peel back the onion. That's how they uncover the need behind the need, and sometimes the need behind the need, behind the need. And that is how they hit pay dirt so consistently compared to their just good or average performing peers. All right, big lie number three, don't show the demo on the first call. Okay? That's also wrong. Now, I'm not saying you have to show the product on the first call. In fact, I personally rarely do. But that's a function of my unique sales process and my company's unique sales process. But forcing your buyers through a rigid sales process where you refuse to show them anything on the first call, despite the fact that maybe they want to see it, that's a great way to just send them off to your competitors. Okay, so here's a little, little known secret. You can craft what I call teaser demos on the first call that actually open the discovery process even more. You're not showing too much. You're not showing too little. You're just showing a couple things based on what you know about them. That gets their mind spinning a little bit in a good way. Okay? That gets your buyer thinking and therefore talking. You can use teaser demos to facilitate discovery. Right? Demoing on the first call. Now that you know that is not the antithesis of discovery. The two can be happily married together. Okay, big lie number four. You have to find personal impact. Now, I'm not opposed to you asking questions that have the intent to find personal impact, right? But I'll say two things about this. Number one, it's easy to misuse this. So most, most salespeople ask really cheesy questions when they try to do this. Like, so how does this impact you personally? Right? And it's not that buyers hate that kind of question. It's that people hate that kind of question. It's a thinly veiled attempt at outright manipulation, right? How do you think this impacts you personally? People can see right through that. You're not asking because you care and they know it. You're asking because you want to grind down the pain and they know that. Okay, now here's the second thing I'll say. As at the time of this recording, about, I don't know, less than a year of selling P Club to Businesses, our online learning platform. I've closed over 50 deals myself. And exactly zero of them, exactly zero of them involved me asking about personal impact at some point during the sales process. Now, that's not to say personal impact wasn't there. It probably was. It was probably sitting underneath the surface. But business impact was enough. And I just never asked about personal impact because the people cared about the business impact. It was a business impact that they, as an individual, cared about. And it's pretty easy to connect the dots about how that impacts you personally if you're a buyer. So I never asked. And yet the money is in the bank. So just keep that in mind. Okay? Big lie number five, and the last one. Discovery is the first and most important stage in the sales process. Okay? That's a lie. Because discovery, despite what shows up in your CRM, is not a stage in the sales process. Okay? That kind of thinking leads to checklist style discovery calls that feel like an interrogation rather than a conversation because you're trying to get all the exit criteria or things you need to get out of this discovery before you move on to the next stage in your CRM or sales process or whatever. Now, the right way to think about this is discovery is a process, not an event, okay? Discovery is a process, not an event. And you should give yourself permission to not cram everything into the first call with a new opportunity. Okay? Come back on the second call or even third call with a few key questions that maybe you didn't have time for. It's okay if you don't do every single thing that you're supposed to do according to the textbooks. Trust me, you're going to be fine. So here's the big takeaway. Most salespeople underestimate what great discovery looks like. They know what good discovery looks like, but they don't yet know what great discovery looks like. Good discovery going forward is dead. Great discovery is alive and well. And the superstar salespeople of the future and even today are going to level up their discovery skills to be great. So if you got value from this video, just show the love a little bit by hitting the like button. Comment what you got out of this. Maybe share it out with your network and I'll see you in the next episode.