86% of Buyers Will Pay More for Value—Yet Sales Leaders Keep Handing Out Checklists. Why?

Let’s talk about what’s really happening after Discovery One. A survey out this year, How Buyers Want to Be Sold, found that nearly 47% of buyers admit they’ve purchased the wrong product because the salesperson didn’t understand their problem. Yet, SOME sales leaders keep giving their reps those checklists—and then wonder why deals push and sales cycle lengths are increasing.

Here’s the kicker: In all of the deep diving I have done this past year over 100 calls with companies, I’ve found that  50-87% of opportunities are dropping off after Discovery One. Why? Because reps are running either staying super surface level with their questions causing the buyer to check out and not be interested, OR, in many cases, reps are forced to go through a series of checklist questions. The typical leadership fix I hear? “We need more top-of-funnel!” 🙄 Spoiler alert: throwing more at a broken process only breaks it more so why add more on top?

Let’s fix what we have….first.

Why Checklists Fail

Checklists are seller-focused, not buyer-focused. Yep – I said it. They are designed to have control over the information that sellers get from buyers, but often uncover no meaningful data. Buyers can feel when discovery is super surface level. (How do I know this? Because I often hear – “wow” I’ve never been asked that before, or “great questions” – or “you are really making me think”.

According to the survey mentioned above and published by A Sales Growth Company:

• 37% of deals stall because reps don’t understand the buyer’s problem.
• 61% of buyers didn’t know they needed a product until after talking to a salesperson—when discovery was done right.

So lemme ask you this? Do you even know the problems that you solve for your buyers? Does Marketing? Does everyone? A good exercise is to send an email to the head of every single department and say – give me 3-4 business problems that we solve for.

If you get 30 different answers – you are most likely in trouble. If your own team doesn’t know, your sellers don’t know and your buyer’s sure as heck can’t figure out what you are helping them with.

But most reps don’t go deep enough. They skim the surface, ask generic questions, and jump straight to a demo. And that’s why deals stall after Discovery One.

Stop Blaming Reps and Start Fixing Leadership

Checklists don’t teach your team how to:

• Identify the real business problems your product solves.
• Ask deeper, problem-centric questions.
• Be agile in discovery and adapt to the buyer’s unique environment.

If you’re not willing to invest time in teaching and coaching these skills, your team will stay stuck, and your pipeline will keep dropping off.

But first start with – what the heck do we even solve for. It’s an eye opening exercise!