5 Discovery Call Mistakes to AVOID in Sales (fix these NOW! ✅)

I first realized my discovery was broken when I prepared for hours for an executive discovery call. I had what I thought were the most relevant, thoughtful questions. I had researched their business, I'd researched them personally, but I was still cut off after asking just my first two questions with him saying, kyle, you asked me for this meeting. Why don't you just tell me what you do? He had no patience for what I thought was my perfect discovery. What I want to talk to you today is why most reps are still failing at sales discovery calls, why their buyers are getting impatient, why their buyers are refusing to answer questions, and why their buyers are just asking them to cut to the chase before the rep feels prepared to do so. So the first and possibly biggest mistake that reps make is they go into discovery and they put way too much burden on the buyer, and they're basically trying to put the buyer to work. And buyers don't want to work hard to understand your solution. But when you're asking questions like, tell me about your role or please don't ask this question, but people do, what keeps you up at night, you're basically asking them to put all this effort in to help you understand them. The burden's on them. They don't want that burden. They. That's where you're going to get questions like. Or comments like, just tell me what you do, or send me a case study. Another big mistake reps make is pretending to understand. When I'm doing call reviews with my team, whenever I hear a rep say, okay, yeah, that makes sense, I'll pause the recording and I'll say, hey, did that actually make sense to you? And nine times out of ten, they'll admit they know what. It didn't really make sense to me. It was just a lot more comfortable to move on in the conversation than to admit that I was confused. I didn't want to embarrass myself. I didn't want to make the buyer think that I wasn't competent. Unfortunately, pretending to understand kills your deal because, one, you don't actually figure out how to help them, and two, your buyer doesn't believe you when they go explain something super complex, and then you say, okay, yeah, that makes sense, and you move on like, there's no way that made sense to you. It barely makes sense to me. There's no way that you just figured all of that out. Another big mistake is scripted questions. Look, I am totally in favor of preparing for your calls. I'm totally in favor of having questions that you almost always ask the problem Though with too much pre planning and too much script is you fall into the trap of uncovering really valuable nuggets. But then instead of going deeper into that area, you move on to the next question because you checked off the previous question. This is a disaster because you end up chasing them down a funnel to talk about less important things rather than dwelling on areas that are actually more important to them. Which leads to the next pitfall that reps fall into, which is going wide but not deep. You go uncover surface level information for pain, surface level information for their current scenario, and you go super wide across their entire department responsibilities or their entire role. And you fail to go deep into any individual area. And going deep is where we uncover the nuggets that actually win deals. And then finally, another big mistake that's making discovery is you're trying to force a fit. You go into every discovery with the goal of converting to an opportunity at any cost. You go into that second call with a goal, getting to a demo at any cost, and then proposal on and on and on. Even though when you do that, most of your deals actually end up with you being ghosted. Because you are so persistent and forceful in trying to get to the next step in your sales process, your buyer finds it easier to just ignore you than to tell you more clearly, I'm just not that into you. So let's walk through what you should be doing instead to get really good at discovery, starting with how you can put more of the burden on you. Here's my advice. Have a strong opinion, loosely held. Now, what I mean by that is your strong opinion is your point of view of what you think your buyer cares about, how you think they're trying to solve those problems based on your research, based on your mastery of your space. So when you go into the conversation, you're saying things like most VPs of sales like you care about ABC instead of asking so what do you care about? And putting the burden back on them. The reason why I make sure to say loosely held is this is still a discovery. There is. There are few things more distasteful than a sales rep bringing their strong opinion and turning the discovery into just you talking at the customer about what you think. That is not the way I want the pendulum to swing. I want you to show your buyer that you're educated. I want you to share with them your opinion, but I want you to make it super clear that you're totally okay being wrong. And the second that your buyer indicates that your point of view is incorrect, either Completely off or partially off, you are quick to abandon your opinion and go understand from your buyer how to make it more accurate. Another way to remove the burden from your buyer is to don't just go into discovery to extract information. Don't just spend your time thinking of the right questions to ask. Go in planning to also educate your buyer. Bring information that will be interesting to them. Have it a goal to make sure that even if they don't move forward with your solution, they still find value in the time they spend with you in a conversation. One of the greatest pieces of feedback I ever got as a seller was when I ran a discovery and the call ended and he's like, hey, I feel like you're an actual business partner. I feel like you're an advisor. I feel like you want to understand our business and we appreciate what you taught us today. And of course they met again and of course they bought our solution because they're thinking, man, if you add this much value in a sales conversation before you bring in your solution, I can't even imagine how much value you're going to add as an actual partner to our business. Going back to the don't pretend to understand, Ask for clarification. Never be afraid to look stupid. The better I've gotten at discovery, the better I've gotten at sales, the more comfortable I've gotten to say things like, huh, that didn't really make sense to me. Can you describe that again a different way? There's nothing wrong with that because realistically, most buyers, most people aren't really great at explaining things in a complex way. And so when you're asking for clarification, they're more than happy to go back and explain in a way, because they want you to understand that. They want you to understand their problems. Because if you don't understand their problems, how on earth are you going to find the right solution for them? So don't be afraid to admit that you're completely lost. That's okay. Go help them explain to you to understand how to actually support them. And a really good way to do this naturally and comfortably is by developing natural curiosity. The best reps are naturally curious. They ask questions because they want to understand what somebody cares about. They ask questions because they're actually curious how their business works. They don't ask questions to check it off of their call sheet. As you're doing this, you don't want to be curious across the entire wide map. We talked a little bit ago about the pitfall of going too wide and not deep enough. Go try to uncover things three important problems or three critical opportunities and go deep across those. Ask for the clarification. Be naturally curious about three areas to allow you to go deep in the conversation. Don't go try to be surface level across five to seven problems or opportunities. Couple reasons for this one. If you're going across that many problems or that many opportunities, then you're not going deep, right? You're not actually understanding those things. 2. It's overwhelming for your buyer. They sit on a call with you and you uncover seven to 10 problems. They're just like, holy crap, how am I ever going to deal with all of these? And now they're just going to pretend the call never happened, put it under the rug and move on and probably not talk to you again. That's just kind of a disappointing and depressing conversation to find that many potential issues and then finally empower the no Be totally okay with Losing a deal at Discovery. You've all heard the phrase lose deals fast. This is absolutely critical, especially when buying cycles are getting longer. Even in the best of circumstances, you have to disqualify deals early. Whenever I would end a discovery, I would make sure to give them an easy exit. Like, hey, if we were to continue the conversation, the outcomes I'd be helping you solve our A, B C. The way we'd be doing that is xyz. Are those valuable enough outcomes for you to continue the conversation? And if they say no? Great. Because if they say no, then there's no way they're going to buy down the road. I'd much rather have that clarity early in the deal cycle than wait till the end. I hope this is helpful. Discovery is tricky. It takes a lot of time to master it. But if you can go avoid these really common pitfalls, you're going to instantly uplevel your initial conversations with your buyers. If you found this video helpful, let me know I'm going the right direction by leaving a like on this video. Then, if there are any questions or topics you want to make sure I cover in a future video, leave me a comment. I read all comments and I love recommendations that will help me help you sell more. Finally, don't forget to subscribe. That way you won't miss any of my upcoming content that I'm creating to help you improve the way that you sell.