This content was created by Adam Kay. This content was uploaded by Adam Kay. This is a YouTube video titled "Deadly Sales Mistake: Stop 'Cramming' Discovery Into Your First Call" created on November 16, 2023. It features Armand Farrokh discussing strategies for effective discovery in sales calls, emphasizing that discovery should be a process rather than a single event, and providing insights into how to structure initial sales calls.
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Foreign. Welcome to another episode of the Getting to Club podcast. This is the show where technology salespeople learn to become and stay a President's Club winner or President's Club contender at their companies, either in spirit, if you don't have a President's Club, or in reality, if your company does have a President's club or something like it. Today, I'm going to answer one of the most common questions I get about discovery. And it's more or less this question. How do I fit in all of this discovery into the first call or first couple calls when it feels so seller oriented? Right. If you're suggesting I ask all of these questions, the buyer, depending on how I approach it, may or may not be getting a, you know, value. You're not giving them information, you're just gathering information. And this question comes from both those who haven't taken the SaaS Discovery Masterclass course, but also those that have. Right. This is an online course we provide with a P Club IO membership. And there are five steps that the course recommends sellers take for deal closing discovery. It's identify the business pain, understand its current state, diagnose its root cause, explore negative impact, and then build a compelling future state. And a lot of salespeople look at that five step framework and they're like, this makes total sense. But how do I cram all of this in to the first call? And the answer is, you don't. Okay, this is not a first call framework where you're supposed to just cram it all in. This is something that can naturally unfold throughout the sales process. Maybe not the entire sales process, but typically at least the first half. And so I had somebody ask this question in the pclub IO online Slack community yesterday, and it was phrased almost exactly how I teed it up. It was like, we've got these five steps. How do I cram it all in? And if you don't cram it all in, what does that tend to look like? Now the short version of that is what does it tend to look like if you don't cram it all in? Depends on your sales process and your sales motion. But I can give you an example of how I do this over at pclub IO when I'm selling to businesses. Okay, so what I'll typically do is my first discovery calls, I wouldn't call them light, but I also wouldn't call them heavy. Typically, I'm trying to achieve a couple things. Number one is understand the business pain that they're dealing with. And what is the need behind the need that is driving them to act on this to begin with. And then number two is I want to understand their perceived root causes and maybe give them a little bit of food for thought on what the root causes could be. And that's it. Okay, those are, that's only like two, maybe even just one and a half steps of that five step framework that I'm accomplishing on the first call. Now the question then becomes, how do I do those other things that are part of the framework? How do I build negative impact? How do I build a compelling future state? And the answer for me is I will continue what I learned in discovery on on to the next call. Okay, so the next call for again, I'm using PCLUP IO as an example because that's what I sell. The next call is typically a 45 minute demo call, right. First was a 30 minute discovery call where I did those two things I mentioned. And then I schedule a 45 minute demo call. Now, on that 45 minute demo call, the first thing I'm going to do, usually for around the first seven minutes of the call, is I'm going to summarize everything that I learned on the last call. My talk track is I want to make sure I'm fiercely aligned with what trying to solve. So let me summarize the business outcome you're trying to achieve and then let me summarize some of the root causes that are stopping you from achieving this business outcome. Right. This takes maybe three minutes. And I'll say, did I get that right? And they usually say yes or they'll add some additional context, at which point I then briefly continue discovery just for a couple minutes. And I'll say, all right, well, I think it's time to get into a demo. Right? I'll say that to make sure they know it's coming because that's why they're here. But I have to ask, now that we have this challenge established, what are some of the ripple effects you're seeing this have on the rest of the business? Or who else in the business are you seeing this impact and how. And I'll even soften my language. I'll, you know, I'll say things like we'll get into the demo for just a second or we'll get to the demo in just a second here. But it feels like I missed something on our last call. And then I start to explore negative impact and ask about consequences and those kinds of things. Okay, so that's what it looks like in my world. I'm not saying that has to. That's how it has to be in your world. Because your selling environment's probably different than mine. And that's why we don't make those hard coded recommendations on the course. Because it is going to change from sales motion to sales motion. But the point here is like, stop thinking about discovery as an event, right? Stop trying to cram in every checkpoint of discovery you're trying to get done into your first 30 minute call. A, it's not going to happen and B, even if it did, it wouldn't be a good experience for your buyer. Instead of thinking of discovery as an event, a static stage, think of it as a process that naturally unfolds. Now, you don't want it to unfold throughout the entire sales process, right? If you're at the end of the sales process and you're negotiating and you're still asking about pain, it's going to be a little bit weird. Summarizing and validating and making sure nothing has changed. Yeah, that's fine. But you would never ask like a net new discovery question at the end of the sales process. So as long as you have a goal of more or less fleshing out the full picture of your buyer situation during your first two, three, maybe four calls, and none of those have to be dedicated discovery calls, you should be more or less fine. Okay, so that's all for today. I just wanted to make it crystal clear. Discovery is not a an event. It's not something you cram everything into inside a single stage in your sales process. Yes, you will front load a lot of it into the first call or two, but let it naturally unfold and give yourself the breathing room and permission to not get everything done in that first 30 minutes. So I hope today was helpful. If you have any questions and you're seeing this on YouTube, go ahead and just comment and write them below and I'll do my best to respond them or respond to them. If you liked this video, hit the like button and I will see you in the next episode.
