How to do sales discovery well

You’re selfish.

At least that’s how it comes across in your sales cycles.

That’s what I’ve found working with a lot of founders who are just getting started with sales. They book a demo with a prospect. Then they go about showing every feature, every button. They’re explaining how the tech works.

But the real job in sales is to understand your prospects. Their world. Their context. And what problems they have.

And what pain comes from those problems. How it impacts other parts of the business.

Once you really understand this, you can carefully craft the rest of your sales cycle and demo to help show how you understand their problem, and how you can help solve the problem. Not the other way around, making it about you instead of them.

But in order to do this well, you’ll need to get really good at this one sales skill.

DISCOVERY.

In this newsletter, we’ll do a deep dive into sales discovery, the FOUNDER framework, and how to dwell in pain.

Table of Contents

• What is Sales Discovery?

  • P.S. These videos will be exclusive to members as …

• Discovery Framework

• How to start a pain discussion

• How to probe further on pain

  • P.S. These videos will be exclusive to members as …

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.

P.S. These videos are exclusive to members as part of a founder-led sales masterclass.

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.

P.S. These videos are exclusive to members as part of a Founder-Led Sales masterclass

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.