In this sales‑training lesson, Adam Kay explains how to handle inbound buyers who are already in the solution‑exploration phase of their buyer’s journey. Because these prospects are eager to discuss product visions, sellers often struggle to uncover the underlying business pain that originally drove the search. Kay introduces a four‑step “Go Back in Time” technique that first aligns with the buyer’s current focus, then deepens that discussion (wallow), smoothly transitions to present‑day challenges (segue), and finally pulls the conversation back to the original trigger event that created the need. He provides concrete example questions for each step, a cheat‑sheet of softened phrasing, and a “killer” context‑led question that prompts the prospect to visualize the meeting where the problem was defined, eliciting richer, more concrete answers. The lesson ends with a call to practice the technique on the next discovery call, positioning the seller ahead of most competitors who fail to move beyond surface‑level solution talk.
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Okay, in this lesson you are going to learn how to handle buyers that are on the second half of their buyer's journey, buyers that are actively exploring solutions. Now here's the challenge: you want and you need to uncover pain and problems, but your buyer is predisposed to talking about solutions and maybe even wants to prematurely see your product, right? If you've been in sales for any amount of time, you probably struggle with that tension with a lot of buyers who come to you, a lot of inbound buyers. Now I'll remind you about the SUCCESS principle because this is the foundation for your— how you're going to handle this situation. Your initial— and again, I emphasize your initial discovery approach and your initial questions should align with their buyer's journey stage. You're going to meet them where they are. Now, since in this case the buyer wants to discuss their vision for a solution, because that's where they are, they're actively exploring solutions. You will start by discussing their vision for a solution. You will align yourself to the buyer, and the way you're going to do this while still uncovering business pain is through what we call the Go Back in Time technique. This is where you start by asking a few questions that aligns with their desire to talk about solutions. Then and only then you bring them back in time to discuss the original pain or problem that set all of this in motion. When you align first, you earn the right to go back in time to pain. Okay? So in other words, you're going to start down here. You're going to start with questions that address their buyer's journey stage, solution-oriented questions. Then and only then are you going to back in time and ask about the original pain and the original problem that they may have defined earlier. Okay, so most sellers in this situation, when, where buyers come to them, they're actively exploring, most sellers start their question sequence to the effect of, why are you looking into this? You are going to approach it a little bit more differently and a little bit with a little bit more sophistication. And here's what this is going to look like. It's the 4-step go back in time technique. So we've got our buyer's journey here. We know the buyer is in the bottom of their funnel. Your first step is to align. Now, a question that aligns with where they are in the buyer's journey and aligns with the fact that they want to talk about their vision for a solution is this: Can you help me understand what you're looking for in a product or service like this? Okay. You are almost never going to get friction from that question if they're in this stage of the buyer's journey. Now, instead of just checking the box and move on, your next step is to wallow in that vision for a few minutes. Okay. You don't want to just ask and then go do whatever you wanted to do. Because that seems disingenuous. So instead you're going to hover and you're going to ask additional questions that align with solution-oriented parts of the buyer's journey. Things like, what are you looking to accomplish with a product like this? What else are you looking for it to do? Now, after you've spent a couple minutes, now you're going to go to step 3. Now you've got to start to segue to pain. It's great that you've aligned, but we've also got to uncover pain. So you're going to get them to what things look like today. So step 3 is segue, and a great question to segue is right after asking about capabilities that they want, you say, how are you handling things today without those capabilities? Okay, in other words, these first 2 steps, they've been telling you about capabilities or maybe product features they want and outcomes they're trying to achieve, and then you segue by piggybacking off of that and say, well, how are you getting along without those today? What does it look like today? And now that you've segued to talking about their active pain, now you're going to go all the way back in time and ask for the trigger event, them from latent pain to active pain. So step 4 is to go back in time. And the question is, can I go back in time with you for a second? What was the original trigger event or problem that made you prioritize looking into this? Okay. In so doing, in following that 4-step sequence, you uncover the transition from latent to active pain, even though you started with solutions, you've gone beyond surface-level discovery. There's still more work to do, but you are ahead of 90% of sellers in this situation. Now, I'm not going to spend much time on this slide, but I created this slide as a cheat sheet list of the questions that I just went through in order, and I added a little bit of highlighted language that softens them up a bit. And makes buyers a little bit more receptive to answering that. So if you're interested in looking at this, feel free to just pause the recording. I'll put it as a resource in the platform as well. Now, before we end this lesson, I wanted to teach you the ultimate go back in time question, the killer question, and why it's a killer question. And this is how I phrase it. So I tee the question up by saying, can I go back in time with you for a second on something? Right? This is step 4. You know what you want more than most people I talk to. That tells me you probably have a well-defined problem. I'm guessing at some point you and your colleagues had a meeting about that problem where you all decided you were going to act on it and you were going to find a solution. I'm curious what that meeting sounded like and how you all defined the problem that set this initiative in motion. Now, this is kind of a long question because it has a lot of tee-up. This is what we call a context-led question. But the reason this is so effective is because the question in the context triggers concrete mental pictures in their head, which gets rich responses. You're not just asking, "So what was the original problem?" You're asking them to go back in time to put themselves in the meeting with their colleagues where they defined the problem, and now they're going to speak more powerfully. Right? They've got this concrete mental image that they can draw on to answer your question. So before you move on, I want you to go try this technique on your next inbound discovery call. The next time you're on a new discovery call where you identify that they're actively exploring solutions, that's where they are in the buyer's journey. I want you to try these 4 steps, the go back in time technique from aligning to wallowing to segueing, to going back in time. Give that a try before you move on, and I'll see you in the next lesson.
