Checklist Discovery Questions Are Ruining Your Pipeline; Here’s What To Do Instead
The biggest drop off in pipeline is happening after Discovery one yet no one seems to be alarmed. More top of funnel tends to be the answer, but it is costing you more money and burning your reps out.
Curious as to why so much drop off is happening, I set out to investigate in further detail why so many teams are losing buyers at this stage. Unscientific research has shown (this is after 9 months of conducting discovery calls and diving into more pipelines and stages that I can count) anywhere from a 50%-87% drop off after discovery one.
That means that upwards of 80+ of what your team worked so hard to get in – is gone! Nothing like throwing money and resources down the drain.
What is this stemming from?
- Checklist selling
- Buyers tuning out as they see no case to continue the conversation
Time and time again I ask CROs and VPs what their discovery process looks like. Half of the time, they do not know, and the other half starts out with a checklist of questions reps are provided, product information they spent weeks diving into and case studies that they were asked to read.
Let me just say this one more time!
If you are arming your team with a checklist of questions to ask during discovery, this is a HUGE reason that you are losing the buyer after the first call. Other reason can be that you are doing a demo that has no problem-product correlation and that your team is unaware of the business problems you solve – but we will get into those later.
Checklists are seller-focused. This seller-focused approach is often under the guise of “putting the buyer first”, when in reality, it does the opposite. In fact, there have been multiple studies that indicate that when your team doesn’t show up as a trusted advisor and conducts a shallow discovery – you lose deals (see – my self conducted research wasn’t wrong!)
Multiple companies have published studies as to the importance of discovery and the impacts of not equipping teams with this critical engagement.
In the LinkedIn State of Sales Report, it was noted that:
- 74% of top-performing salespeople say they always put the buyer’s problems first in their sales process, compared to only 49% of non-top performers.
- This shows that high-performing sellers are more focused on uncovering the buyer’s true problems, often through more meaningful, problem-centric discovery.
Gartner indicates that Buyers Prefer Reps Who Add Value Early
- Gartner research found that 89% of buyers say they expect salespeople to act as trusted advisors, providing valuable insights and expertise early in the sales process, which underscores the need for meaningful, problem-oriented discovery.
So my question to the leaders reading this, if stats show that the majority of the value, insights, and quantitative data comes from the discovery process, and this is what in fact DRIVES the ability for your team to make a case for change, why are you not investing and doubling down on:
- Getting your team laser focused on the unique business problems you solve for your customer
- Equipping the team with the business acumen of your ideal buyer and how to be able to provide value and expertise during discovery
- Building the confidence of team members so they can be agile and responsive in the moment during discovery?
Recently, I chatted with a new CRO who is undoing all of the bad behavior from previous management. This included a one day onboarding for product, a one day deep dive into the CRM and then a third day of hitting the phones armed with a discovery checklist. In this CRO’s words, they stated, “our team is really shitty at discovery”.
And what is happening as a result. They are facing layoffs, they cannot upsell or bring in any net new business AND, the company is at a break even point. They are NOT growing and it’s showing.
So why do sales leaders continue to arm teams with discovery checklists – aka, the easy button?
From what I hear it’s because sales leadership doesn’t have time, isn’t equipped to train the team on proper discovery, no alignment across the sales org on how to run discovery and why it’s so important, no one can settle on what “good discovery” looks like, and again, what we keep hearing – NO TIME.
The stats do not lie.
Teams making the time to dissect what is happening in discovery, arming their teams to be agile in the moment to respond to the buyer, and who uniquely understands the business problems they solve and how to find that and impacts during discovery are WINNING MORE and LOSING LESS.
Homework.
Find the time.
Take a look at how many opportunities fall off after discovery in your stages/pipeline.
What are the reasons these fall off?
What questions are you teams asking? Dive into call recordings and CRM notes.
Curious if you find that your team is talking all about product and checking off those questions vs. actually getting to problems and impacts during discovery.
That’s a great place to start and could be eye opening as to why you aren’t winning more.
The stats say – ditch the checklist. Are you willing to do so?
