This YouTube live podcast excerpt (Better Sell Better, host Kevin "KD" Dorsey; guest Charles Muhlbauer) focuses on the distinction between sales discovery and qualification. Muhlbauer argues discovery's primary value is giving prospects space to think—about their current processes, surprising insights, internal discussions, and prior attempts to act—whereas qualification is about determining whether a prospect is a fit and whether to continue the conversation. He illustrates the difference using job-interview questions as analogies (qualification = descriptive fit questions; discovery = disqualifying/probing questions).
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Discovery gives you the AE a chance to give the prospect the ability to think. That's why discovery is everything. Because you're allowing the prospect to think, to think about how they're doing things today. To think about an insight that you found that might surprise them, to think about whether that insight is something that they've talked about internally before. To think about whether even if they've talked about it internally before, to what extent have they tried to do anything about it? And if they haven't, why not? Is it because they haven't had the time or is it just really not that important and maybe we should stop talking? It gives the prospect a chance to think about what they've done and what they want to do. And that's why I love it so much. When you're interviewing for a job. Say I'm interviewing to work for you, Kevin. And you say, Charles, when you were at XYZ company or when you were at CB Insights or what have you, what kind of deals did you sell? What was the average deal size? How many team, how many people were on your team? What was your day like? Those are qualification type questions. You want to know a little bit about what I do and what that looks like and whether or not I'm even fit to talk more. Right? That's what selling is all about. Just Is there a reason to talk more? Is there a reason to talk more? Is there a reason to talk more? That's qualification questions on an interview. Discovery questions on an interview would be disqualifying me. Why are you looking to for a job here? Why should I hire you? What's something that I should be concerned about? If you know what's one thing that I haven't asked you that's not on your resume that I should ask you? So I guess that's an example I like to use. So I would say discovery is more disqualification like pushing you away while quite a little bit while qualification is first getting an understanding as to whether or not you're even a fit to have that type of discussion so that's how I would describe it A lot of people qualification is a very light form of discovery but I do not consider qualification discovery that's how I would explain it.
I'm with you there and I think.
I'm not sure if that's clear Is that like somewhat clear?
Yeah I think it's clear because the when I asked you before like why is discovery the foundation of everything? A word that you use that no one ever really uses is like you said you give them the opportunity to think qualification questions don't make them think right?
That's right so even if, even if another good definition if we stopped at.
All right now and said the difference between discovery and qualification questions is one makes them think one does not people would already be better.
