How to do discovery on a first call

Am I doing too much discovery?

I’m I not doing enough?

Should I do a 30 minute intro call or a 60 minute intro call?

At what point does discovery become annoying to the prospect?

Why can’t I find urgency in my deals.

We all have these thoughts about discovery. Many founders jump too early into demos without really understanding what pains they’re solving for.

Today we’ll cover discovery frameworks and how to put it together in a first call.

Table of Contents

• What is sales discovery?

• Discovery Framework

• How to start a pain discussion?

• How to probe further on pain?

• How to run an intro call

  • Prep

  • The Start

  • The Kickoff

  • Facts, Objectives, and Pains

  • Pain-probing Questions

  • Summarize What You’ve Learned

  • Share Your Point of View

  • Light Demo

  • Reaching a Decision

  • Booking Next Steps

What is sales discovery?

Sales discovery is all about understanding the root cause problems behind business pain.

Often folks think they’re doing discovery, but what they’re doing is qualification.

They’re finding out facts about the prospect and their company. They’re gathering info about their processes and tools. They’re assessing budgets and timelines. All of these are important, but they’re just scratching the surface.

The bulk of what you want to get to is really understanding what’s causing those problems in the first place. And what kind of negative impact these problems are having on the business.

Discovery Framework

Throughout the entire sales cycle, you’ll be doing discovery.

Remember - discovery is a process, not an event. You are not done asking probing questions after the first 10 minutes of the first call.

Discovery never stops. You will constantly uncover more facts about the deal up until signature. Then you’ll continue to uncover more facts as they onboard to your software.

So implement a system to do discovery well.

I created the FOUNDER framework to help with this.

• Facts - basic information about people, tech, processes. Example what tools do they use.

• Objectives & Pain - what problems do they have in their workflows/processes, and where do they want to get to. This creates a gap in their business. This gap is what you can solve.

• Uncovering Impact - what’s the quantifiable impact this gap is having on the business. Are they losing revenue? Are costs high? Are they at risk of falling out of compliance? What’s the business impact.

• Negative Consequence - this is the cost of inaction. What happens if they don’t solve the problem? What toll will the business impact have? Will the need to do layoffs? Will they miss an important product launch? Will they lose customers? Will they get fined?

• Driving Events - this is a compelling or critical event that’s leading them to a change now. Example “if we don’t solve this in the next 6 months I’ll need to layoff 10% of my staff.” The negative consequence is now tied to a timeframe. This combination creates urgency in a deal.

• Reaching a Decision - how will they make this purchase? Who’s involved? What steps will they take? Where’s the budget? This is everything related to getting from “you can solve my problem” to “signed contract.”

This framework is applied throughout your sales cycles. It’s like choosing a programming language. It helps collect and classify information that help you guide them better. The more info you have for all of this, the better your sales cycles will run.

How to start a pain discussion?

You can’t really just open up a conversation with “what problems do you have?” It’s too broad. It’s too abrasive. You haven’t built trust yet.

And you can’t jump into peeling the onion for pain (the UNDE parts of FOUNDER) when you haven’t really uncovered the superficial pain yet.

So how do you start a pain conversation?

There’s typically two was that have worked for me.

One is to use a “walk me through…” question. Walk me through implies that you need a long answer with enough details. Once they answer, you can ask about where the process breaks down.

Example:

Now you’ve established a high-level/superficial pain, or process related pain. In the next section, you’ll go through how to probe further using a pain funnel.

The other way to start a pain conversation is to use a menu-option question. I like this because it helps you establish your positioning from the start of the conversation, and keeps it very structured.

A menu option question looks like this:

From here you’ve established relevant pain you can probe further on.

Next we’ll cover the pain funnel to help you go futher.

How to probe further on pain?

One of my favorite techniques for probing on pain is to use a pain funnel. The concept was first popularized by Sandler Selling System decades ago.

I’ve modified and added to it to make it more modern and match the FOUNDER framework.

Once you’ve uncovered pain, the pain funnel helps you peel the onion and go deeper into business impact.

Here’s how the pain funnel flows:

• Tell me more about that (FO)

• Can you be more specific? Can you give me an example? (FO)

• How long has that been a problem for you? (FO)

• What have you tried to do about it? (FO)

• How much do you think that’s cost the business? (UN)

• How do you feel about that? (U)

• Where do you want to be? (O)

• What’s stopping you from getting there? (FO)

• What happens if you don’t solve this in the next 6 months? (NDE)

• What’s driving you to make a change now? (NDE)

All of these questions are designed to build off each other, and really help you probe on pain. They help you cover the entire spectrum of FOUNDER so you get as much information as possible about the deal, to better help your prospect make a buying decision.

How to run an intro call

This is what a good first call looks like. You’re asking questions about the prospect, uncovering their pain and impact on business. As time goes on and answers get deeper, you pivot to how you might be able to help. That can be a quick pitch or a light demo. Show them enough so they’re interested, but not so much that there are no next steps left (unless you’re running a one-call close).

Prep

Before the call starts, find relevant events that happened for the prospect. Hiring, funding, new product launches, major updates, etc. This will serve for bonding and rapport.

The Start

This should be relevant to the prospect and business related. You’re trying to build a relationship quickly. No chit chatting about the weather or if they’re working remote. Use the information you found in your prep.

Here’s an example: 

Hey [[prospect_name]], I noticed your latest product launch. Looks great! What role did you play in putting this together?

The Kickoff

Every call starts and ends with an Up-Front-Contract. Get the logistics out of the way - time check and people check. Good pivot words to go from bonding to UFC are “OK,” or “alright.” 

Ok. Are we still good for 30 minutes? And is anyone else expected to join us?

Move on to the purpose. You want to have a strong purpose for each call. 

The purpose of this call is to get a better understanding of your feature request process to see if Savio is a good fit for you. Naturally, I’ll have some questions. Are you OK with that?

Move on to their agenda. Best way to frame it is to talk about their ideal outcome for the call. Framing it this way limits the amount of technical conversation early on in the call, and sets you up for a solid next step right away. 

What’s your ideal outcome for the call today?

Then finish off with asking for a next step conversation. 

We’ll definitely cover that today. There’s two ways this call typically ends. One, we’re not a fit and we don’t move forward. Are you comfortable with telling me no? Great. The other outcome is we can help your testing program. If so, can we reserve 5-6 minutes at the end to discuss next steps, which is typically a custom demo?

This type of UFC sets the conversation right from the start.

Facts, Objectives, and Pains

Use the pain-finding techniques we reviewed earlier:

1. Menu Options: Here you’re presenting the most common pains we’ve solved for our customers as a question, and letting them choose which one is most important to them.

E.g. Typically, when we’re talking to Engineering leaders, they usually have one of the following challenges. They’re frustrated with X, concerned about Y, worried about Z. Are any of those relevant? Which ones? Which one do you think is most important? Oh, that’s interesting. Tell me more about that….

2. Walk me through: This is a broad question to get a situational/lay-of-the-land analysis. It’s important to keep it focused to their goals/challenges/responsibilities. You’re trying to understand process so you have an opportunity to probe deeper. 

E.g. Can you walk me through how you do [[key process/workflow]] today?

Pain-probing Questions

This is where the meat of the conversation happens. Once you’ve assessed a bit of the situation and got a couple quick yesses or a path forward, it opens up your pain funnel. The pain funnel is a magical tool that will uncover MONEY $$$$ for you. The deeper the pain, the more they’re willing to pay. Don’t skip this. Plus side - an effective pain funnel only take 5-7 minutes to go through 

Once you’ve identified a pain, you can use this pain funnel to go deep - here it is again:

-Tell me more about that (FO)
-Can you be more specific? Can you give me an example? (FO)
-How long has that been a problem for you? (FO)
-What have you tried to do about it? (FO)
-How much do you think that’s cost the business? (UN)
-How do you feel about that? (U)
-Where do you want to be? (O)
-What’s stopping you from getting there? (FO)
-What happens if you don’t solve this in the next 6 months? (NDE)
-What’s driving you to make a change now? (NDE)

The goal with the pain funnel is to quickly get them to open up with broad business questions. There are other “generic” questions you can ask to keep them talking. 

E.g.  What else?
  Anything else?
  What do you think is the real challenge there for you? [[Good for personal pain]]

There are also gain questions that can be added to the pain funnel to probe for opportunities. Some prospects are risk-averse, and prefer to focus on mitigating risks or solving pain. Some prospects are opportunistic, and prefer to grow or gain something. It’s good to have a series of questions that cater to both so you’re hitting every angle with every prospect.

Summarize What You’ve Learned

This is where you want to pause and make sure you understand their challenge. Paraphrase using their language, and finish off with “Did I get this right?” If they say yes, this is where you can move on to sharing stories and probing for impact.

Share Your Point of View

This is where you establish the context and share your sales story. Could be slides, or just a quick blurb. Include:

• Your unique polarizing insight on the market

• The alternatives in the market, pros and cons

• The real problem that alternatives haven’t solved yet

• The ideal world for the prospect

• Your solution

Light Demo

At this point, you’ll do a light demo. Try to keep it to 10-15 minutes. Don’t show everything.

Each section of your demo should clearly explain the context, what problem you’re solving, the capabilities they gain, the features of the workflow, and the outcome they can achieve.

End the section with a conversation question, something like:

How does this compare to what you’re doing with [[name their process]]?

Reaching a Decision

Once you have them in awe, we can move on to understanding how they bring on new solutions. You can probe for cast of characters, decision process, decision criteria, timelines, budgeting/financial process, etc. Save enough time for this conversation.

Booking Next Steps

Let’s talk about next steps. You always finish a call discussing next steps.

Here’s a quick and dirty secret on setting next steps - it’s the same as an up front contract, just at the end of the call!!! If you get good at your UFC, you’ll always know how to book next steps. Time + people, purpose of next call, agenda/outcome, and suggesting next step after that.

You can use you ending from this call as your UFC for your next call, and start connecting your meetings. It’s amazing!

Here’s an example of asking for/setting solid next steps: 

 At the start of the call, we set out to solve for [[outcome]]. I believe we achieved that.  [[SILENCE! DON’T SAY A THING! Let them break the silence. If they say yes, move onto the next phase. If no, then you’ve uncovered that you missed something and ask them what you missed. Either way, it sets you up for next steps]] 

So are you ready to move forward? 

Typically, the next step is a customized demo. It’s usually 60-minutes, is that OK? And should [[character 1]] and [[character 2]] join us for this call?

Who else would feel left out? Great, we’ll add them. 

The purpose of this call is to demonstrate how we’ll solve X, Y, and Z. What’s your ideal outcome at the end of that call? Anything else you’d like to cover?  Great, let’s get that on calendar. I have mine open in front of me - does [[next 1-3 business days]] work at [[suggest the same time]]? 

I’ll send you a calendar invite and add the others to it. 

Can I ask you a favor? I’ll email you a summary of our conversation today. Can you read it over and reply back if I got it right?

Thank you. Looking forward to progressing the conversation. Thanks!

One thing to keep in mind when doing sales discovery - even though you need to understand why something is painful, stay away from why questions. Folks get defensive when you ask the why. “how do you mean?” makes no sense grammatically, but means the same as why and comes across way softer. Try to avoid why questions.

Let me know what you think of the newsletter! Always want to cover topics that you care about.

For more practical early-stage sales tips, connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for more hands-on help implementing your first sales process, reach out for coaching packages.

P.S. I have a few spots left for group coaching (starting in July/August). Reply if you’re interested.