Tactics for Problem-Based Discovery with Kevin "KD" Dorsey

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Welcome to the live Better Sell Better.

Podcast with your host Kevin Dorsey of.

Inside Sales Excellence, the number one Patreon group and YouTube channel for tech sellers and tech sales leaders, where we dive in deep for tactical advice on how to book more meetings, close more deals faster, and lead sales teams to success. But we don't stop there. We also focus on the person in salesperson. We talk about mindset goals, time management, and so much more. So thank you for listening and if you're interested, head on over to patreon.com InsideSalesExcellence now with that, grab a notepad, get ready, and let's dive into the good stuff then. I want to talk about this because no one ever talks about taking notes. So I want to share this with everybody because I think it's really important to show how to do this the right way. So I can't remember where I learned this. I wish I could because I would give them full credit. But it's called the T method. All right? You have to write down every keyword that they are saying, any problem that they mention, when they talk about their buckets, when they talk about their why they impact and quantify if possible. But this is why it's called the T method. So if I write down, okay, they mentioned low cost, they mentioned saving for kids college, they mentioned call reluctance, they mentioned, you know, could potentially miss Q3 number, right? So you're writing it all down. But then your goal in the demo is how many times can you bring it over? So I've had reps actually like draw the lines every time. You could just do the check mark. Like, okay, when's the last time I brought up call reluctance? When's the last Time I brought up saving for the kids college, right? It's the T method, right? Because you draw that T, it's how many times can you pull it over into the demo itself? But then also, all of this needs to go into your salesforce, right? You never see these types of notes, right? Where like the actual problems, the impact, the why, all of that. So the T method, crucial for note taking in discovery. Because also too, when you're taking good notes, it'll slow you down. It'll let them keep talking instead of you jumping in and talking over them. So that T method is one of my favorite methods for taking great notes. Now if you can get this in right, and we're going to talk about where to put this, the cost is staying the same. These are also great discovery questions. So what happens if nothing changes? What happens if this is still a problem a year from now? What is this costing you right now? Right? What would be better after? Right? That's fine. We want to talk about what it's causing now this is the. I've talked about this in a few trainings now. If you're just selling a better future, you're missing the whole reason why people change, which is the now, right? What's the cost of staying the same aim, right? This is where you're trying to get them to like, man, I have to change something, right? What would it look six months from now if this was still the case, right? What would happen if at the end of the year you made no changes here? Well, Chad's still be dealing with this, right? This is where you're getting them to agree. Like, again, a change is needed, but that cost is staying the same. Now these questions are also great in the demo, which is something I wanted to talk about here. Keep your powder dry, okay? Save some questions for the demo. So often, every once in a while I'll get a, you know, someone takes me through a great discovery, but then they ask nothing in the demo because they asked all of their questions, right? Discovery can be seven to 10 questions, right? Like, Gong ran a study, it showed it was around like 11ish, right? Was like the sweet spot. Cool. Sorry. 11 to 14 was like for like the total disco call. The initial discovery can be 7 to 10 really good questions. What piqued your curiosity bucket Question impact question. Why? What's it causing? Tell me more. Why would you want to fix it? What would it cost you if you didn't? What happens if you. We're already in this eight. Could I show you now? We're at nine, right? Like you can get to really great discovery nine to ten questions, right? Save some of those deeper questions. Right? Some of even the T method for when you're at the specific parts of the product that apply to that moment. It helps keep the demo more engaging. It keeps me in the process. It helps you avoid the does that make sense Type questions versus okay, so earlier you told me call reluctance. Let's actually dig a little bit deeper there. How have you addressed that? Like why do you think your reps are so reluctant to make the call? What are they afraid of? Right? It's digging in a little bit deeper throughout the demo, not just all up front. So keep your powder dry, get the big impact questions up front, but then have all those subtle follow up questions ready to go. Sets up your benefit laden check ins. We call them BLCs. Does that make sense? It's not a good check in question. A benefit letting question is like, hey, you think that might get you one step closer to actually hitting your Q4 goals? How much closer do you think it would get you compared to what you're doing right now? But this maybe put a little bit more money in your pocket than where you're going right now. How much? So right, like you're asking the impact, what would happen if your team could do this? Right now your team is manually, you know, logging notes. What would happen if they got 20 minutes of their day back? What would they do with it? Those are impact questions. Okay, so I want to talk about this too. Pre demo prep, research the prospect, the company, the team, review your notes, review your script, review potential objections. Right. Like so before every demo I would be going through this like what is the bucket question going to be? What are the most likely impacts? Like what are the leads going to be? Be prepared. Right? So you're not asking questions that are already there. So you can update your deck so it's personalized to me. Right? You should create a demo prep checklist either for yourself or for your team if you're a leader watching this, of what's the demo prep that sets up for this type of discovery? What should they know? What questions are they going to ask? You should have this framework in place. What are these buckets for your reps? So they know what they're going for. So a quick recap here. Remember the framework of discovery and what the goal of it is. Problem based discovery. Have your bucket questions, steer the combo where you want it to go, get the impact and why. Take great notes. You can use it and apply it in the demo. So if we go all the way back to the beginning, you got to remember the goals here. The goal, agree to a problem, find out the impact that problem is having and then the why they'd want to fix it. Agreeing to learning, agreeing to change that is the goal of discovery. And hopefully this framework and this training gave you a better shot at it. Have any questions, hit me up in the Slack channel or on LinkedIn for the next one.