Eric DeeranOne mission — help agency owners build businesses they actually love running.

I ALWAYS play DUMB in my discovery meetings with prospects….Heres WHY

25 Feb 2022 · 1 min

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This short YouTube monologue (Eric Deeran) advises that in discovery calls he intentionally 'plays dumb'—asking many seemingly redundant questions and acting like he knows nothing—so prospects will explain their real problems themselves. The rationale: if you assume needs and tell clients what's wrong, they'll become defensive and unreceptive; by having them articulate issues, you get clearer, honest information.

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A question from someone recently asking me why I ask so many almost redundant questions in my discovery call. And the reason is is because I like to go into every discovery call with every business owner that I'm going to be doing a video deal with as if I am completely dumb. Now what do I mean by that? I think oftentimes we can assume what we think the prospect needs without actually asking them. So I always like to play dumb and pretend like I am completely like completely dumb and I no idea what they need and I need to let them tell me. And the reason I do that is because oftentimes if you assume what the prospect needs, then even if they do need that thing and you're right, they're not going to want to admit it to you because it's like someone telling you what's wrong with your business, you're going to get defensive and you're not going to be receptive to that. They have to actually tell you what the problem is. So that's why I like to play.