Sales Discovery Doesn’t Mean Spinning in Circles (Unless You’re a 4-Year-Old)

Let me start with a confession: my 5-year-old daughter has a certain love for swearing (not sure where she picked that up, honestly). She also loves spinning in circles in our living room until she falls over, laughing hysterically, while I try to convince her that dizziness can lead to the pukes.

Sales reps during discovery? They’re often doing the same thing—spinning in circles, hoping they’ll stumble into the right answers, only to have deals/prospects ghost. It’s basically the same feeling as being sick. The loss of an opportunity that you feel deep down in your gut.

So let’s get serious about making discovery actually work.

Step 1: Permission to Dive Into Your Product

Before we jump into discovery calls and diagnostic questions, let’s zoom out. The first step has nothing to do with sales discovery. It’s understanding your product deeply—so deeply that you know what it solves without fumbling around for answers mid-call.

Think about your product or service right now. Got it in your head? Perfect.

Now ask yourself this:

What information do I need to collect during discovery to diagnose whether this prospect has a problem I can solve?

Notice something? We’re not selling yet. We’re not convincing anyone to buy. We’re preparing to diagnose our customer’s problem environment – like a doctor taking a patient history before prescribing anything.

Step 2: The Knowledge Collection Mission

Discovery isn’t about winging it; it’s about collecting knowledge and data with a purpose. And no, knowledge/data doesn’t just mean “What’s your budget?” or “Are you the decision-maker?” That’s 2010-level selling, and we’re way past that – plus buyer’s hate it.

Here’s the deal: the term “diagnosis” comes from the Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge. To diagnose, you need to know:

• What breaks if the prospect doesn’t have your product or service?
• What processes or tools are flawed without it?
• How does the prospect talk about their problem in their own words?
• What was going on in the prospect’s environment BEFORE you started to talk that compelled them to say yes to the call 

Write it all down. Yes, I mean it. Create a chart, a spreadsheet, a mural on your office wall—whatever works for you – AHEM – your CRM. The point is to group all of this buyer input data into categories to then DO something with that data.

Step 3: Start Looking for the Problems

Once you’ve laid out all the clues, here’s where the magic happens:
You can begin to spot patterns, uncover real business problems, the impacts of not solving those problems and help the buyer to see what they are stemming from.

Without this preparation, discovery turns into guesswork. And guesswork? It often leads to your team pushing out those close dates and buyer’s ghosting.

Before your team dives into discovery, hit pause. Ask yourself one critical question:
What information do we need to collect to diagnose if there’s even a problem to solve?

Anything less, and you’re just spinning in circles like a toddler in your living room. Fun for a minute—but not a great sales strategy.