#595 - 6 Ways You're Killing Your Own Discovery Calls

I've trained over a hundred companies like a firm G2 and Square on how to sell to executives and overcome the status quo. Now recently I sat down and analyzed over a hundred discovery calls that failed. I identified the six most common discovery styles that do not work in 2026. So I'm going to break down all six of those styling styles why they're not working today and what to do instead to sell your prospects on the need to change. Number one is the feature picture. Now the feature picture is one of the most common selling styles because prospects often come to the call asking to see and learn more about our product. Not to mention product is what we've been trained on so it feels good to talk about what we know the most about. So what this looks like is within the first eight minutes we're pulling up the demo and we're showing all the ways in which our product can help them. But meanwhile our prospect has three big jobs to be done in a discovery call. Number one is they have to figure out is this a problem even worth solving. Number two is it worth solving right now and then number three are you the right solution to solve it with. So the problem here is that we never ended up helping them think through number one and number two we jumped right into the solution features and benefits. Correct and that lands you in nice to have camp because there are all sorts of things that I've demoed and looked at recently Jen but if there is not a problem priority that that thing can attach to I end up getting deprioritized or buying from me gets deprioritized relative to all the other things that are at the top of the stack that need to get solved. And so the sequential order of what you need to do is go help them identify that this is a problem worth solving identify that it is worth solving right now and then we can roll into feature pitching. So that's mistake number one and at the end we're going to go through your full discovery flow to be able to accomplish this but for now let's talk about number two which kind of breaks my heart because you call it the rapport secret. So these are the folks that are really likeable they're very warm they spend the first 10 to 15 minutes talking about the prospect expressing shared interest getting to know not one another which is a lovely experience for both parties but the problem is most of us only have 20 to 30 minutes inside of a discovery call and because we've spent so much time on rapport building we don't leave ourselves or the prospect enough time to really size and evaluate the cost of staying the same. And so what's your guidance on rapport instead Jen do I just skip it entirely? So you know one of you weirdo one to two minutes of rapport building is pretty much the sweet spot so when I'm looking to build rapport there's usually three places I'll do it on. So one in my prep obviously I'm looking at their LinkedIn page their Twitter page figuring out if there's any common interest like I've had situations where someone had a dog in their profile anybody who knows me knows I'm a huge dog lover so it's a great way to start the call by saying you know where's Frankie I want to meet him I saw him on your LinkedIn page. Second is company news if there is a new CEO and news of an acquisition I'll express interest in that and say gosh what an exciting time tell me a little bit more about that new CEO coming in it gets them talking early about something that they're comfortable with and then three if I've got nothing in prep I'll show up and I'll look to see is there anything in the zoom background so you can see in mine I've got a bunch of records on the wall I've had sales reps come to me and say what record is that and why's that one up there so it's just a great way to get the person comfortable talking in the beginning of the call. So I think the key thing is to have a transition pre-planned in advance so you don't end up getting stuck in the muck of 10 to 15 minutes of rapport building so for me what I typically will do is say you know before we get too much farther into the conversation do you mind if I share what I learned about your company and your role I don't want to assume that I've got all this correct I'm an outsider looking in but maybe we can start there and that way I can transition into the conversation without having a weird pivot. Great and then when you transition into the conversation you ask them 432 different questions right? Obviously that's what's a good discovery solve that that is number 3 the interrogator so the interrogator is another one we've probably all fallen into the trap of it's not just they ask a lot of questions which they do it's that none of the questions are really threaded together so let's say I'm selling a AI solution to an enterprise law firm something that would have publicly available information out there an interrogator might ask well how big is your firm and what type of cases do you handle and what's your current practice management system and how many lawyers mark worth the firm and as you're going through all of these questions yes you are getting information but two things are happening one the prospect is thinking why didn't you do any of this research in advance it makes us seem as if we're lazy and two by the end of the conversation they're also thinking about the next call and saying I'm not sure I want to go through this again this was a high effort experience where I didn't get anything back immediately from this seller and so it's not just about us getting what we need in the first call it's also about making sure we're creating an experience that they want to come back to and call number two how do I do that number one is we have to do the research beforehand on the obvious questions there's just too much information out there today to be walking in blind to a company so specifically what I'm looking for are what is it that the company is trying to achieve this year CEO objectives founder objectives managing director objectives what is that company trying to get done number two because of those objectives what is likely getting harder for my specific prospect in their role number three how do I think they might be solving for that problem today and the number four what is the negative consequence of it all of these are hypotheses I don't assume because I've done research that I'm correct so the way I deliver it is by seeking to be corrected not seeking to be correct and that sounds like here's what I can see from the outside seems like the business is focused on doing this but where am I off I'm an outsider looking in so the motion is to have them correct you not fill in the blank entirely Jen I don't want to make any big assumptions but I think number four the fourth bad selling style might be about assumptions it's absolutely right number four is the assumption maker so a lot of people who read the cover of the challenger sale but didn't actually read the book or go for the training assume that great selling is about walking in and telling a customer how their world works it's a great way to be left out of a room so this is where we come in with some sort of hypothesis because of our research but instead of treating it like a hypothesis we treat it like a fact so let's say I'm selling a digital analytic solution to a CMO I might start off the call and say something like most CMOs are really struggling to prove which campaigns drive revenue is that true for you to the CMO might come back and say well you know it's a headache it's a headache for everybody but it's not my biggest challenge my biggest challenge is we're dumping all this money into top of funnel but when people sign up they poke around they don't come back it's really more of a retention challenge and now my CEO is telling me why are we spending all this money when we can't seem to retain it and at this moment an assumption maker will say yes yes but I'm sure there's probably ways that we can be helping you with attribution and they'll pivot back to their original thesis for the call the problem with this is it does one of the worst things we can do as salespeople which is it makes the prospect feel like we're not listening and we're not hearing them and so what we want to do instead is we want to bring these hypotheses to the call but it's a starting point it we don't treat it as fact and so when something doesn't fit the hypotheses that we brought in you want to stop and just dig into it so the way I'll say it is like that's interesting that's not what I expected to hear can you tell me more about this retention issue what's happening in that first week when someone signs up this does mean that your call will take a different path but that is far more important than just going down the path for the sake of staying true to your assumption great let's talk about number five which is the premature solver yeah so the premature solver is another very common one it's where you hear that beautiful statement of pain that we know our solution can solve and then we pivot to that's exactly how we can help now the problem with this is there are pains and problems everywhere in businesses there's no company that can afford to fix every single problem that exists it's one of the hardest jobs isn't an executive is I've got a look at a bunch of problems and I've got to let some set because others are bigger so when I do this and I pivot right to here's how we can help the problem for that is now I haven't helped that prospect size the pain so maybe we can help with the problem but is that problem even big enough to act on now we don't know because we jumped right into the solution and so what I do instead is number one I'm seeking to understand how they're solving the problem today so if you're an account manager you might already have some insight into this because of your existing relationship so it could be like you know when I spoke with someone so on the team she mentioned that the way that you're currently solving for that problem is this is that still the case right that's if I know if I don't know like I'm calling in a new logo and I haven't had any other conversations I can frame it as often I hear that CFOs do this to to attack that problem but how are you different and I'm intentionally asking for how are you different because if I say is that what you do too there's a tendency for people to be agreeable and to say yes sure that's about it if I ask how you're different that's where I learn far more and that's all discovery really is it's me learning new things about their company today's show is brought to you by Mutant Evie AI agent that helps you personalize your buyer's experience and beat the competition. The best sellers connect the dots between what they learn and discovery and everything else they share with their prospect. Every demo you show and every piece of content you share, you need to explicitly tie back to. I'm presenting this to you because you said X. Now this applies to business cases, proposals and more and we partnered with Mutiny on the three magic sales templates to help you move your deals without needing your marketing teams help. Grab it in the show notes. Today's show was brought to you by Outreach, the Agentech AI platform for driving execution across every stage of your deal. Great sellers drive velocity at every stage of their sale and one thing that's worked well for me is assigning red line deadlines to my prospects when we kick off vendor review. Even artificial micro deadlines for things like first cut of red lines and security review helps my prospects get their internal team moving. We built a guide on how to help you drive six and seven figure deals with our friends at outreach. Get it free in the show notes. The worst discovery advice is just be curious and ask lots of questions. Look our prospects are not showing up to sales calls to answer our questions. They're showing up to get their questions answered and to figure out how we can solve their problem. And this is what pipe drive does. If you want to get clear complete sales disability, you can use pipe drives easy to use and customizable CRM that is designed to be simple from day one and stay easy to use as your team grows. We actually put together an entire resource hub with pipe drive to help you get to president's club and you can get them for free in the 30 MPC pipe drive Closer's hub. The link is in the show notes. I think there's one other really powerful thing about that question, Jen, in that one, you are demonstrating credibility by your saying, look, most COOs when they're thinking through how client intake should work. They've got a six step workflow where first it goes to the attorneys, then it goes to the conflicts team, yada, yada, yada. And then you say, how are you different from that? You are demonstrating. I know people like you. This isn't me just being like, so how do you do that? I'm not clueless because a COO does not want to sit there and teach you the seller the basics. They want to be like, okay, this person gets it. Let me talk through the complexities. And you demonstrate that. You show that when you lead that way. And then the other thing you're doing is something that I've learned from you, which is like you are seeking to be corrected as opposed to affirmed, which I think is just like such an awesome way to also put yourself in a position of you raise your status by showing them. I know how this workflow typically works, but it's a humble raised status as opposed to an assumption, know it all person. I think it might be time for number six, which is the last one, but it is right. You're doing an excellent job of role-playing number six, the hedger. So the hedger is the person who hears something that they know is going to be problematic on a call, but because they don't want to ask a hard question or they don't want to hear a no, which frankly, we've all probably fallen into this trap before. They let it coast. They let it slide. And anytime there's any ounce of friction, we rush to make it comfortable again for them and for ourselves. The problem with that is every great sale has friction. Selling is changed, change naturally has friction, so we can't be scared of it because if we shy away from it, the unintentional signal we're sending to our buyer is I'm going to have to figure out when I hit a roadblock or I hit a blocker or I hit a speed bump, I'm going to figure that out on my own because Jen seems very shy when I raise issues. And the more we put on our champion, the harder being a champion is for them and the more effort that's on their plate, the less likely they are to act because they have a full-time job back in the business. And so one of the things that was hard for me but has become one of the best things that I've learned to do is just to get comfortable calling out the elephant in the room. It is not a choice between asking a hard question and maintaining a warm tone. You can do both together. So if I hear, for example, that a prospect is saying we just brought in a new CEO and they worked with one of your competitors with their previous company, a headger would brush right through it. Instead, I want to pause and say, my gosh, like if things went well, it seems like that could prevent a really big hurdle for our plan to move forward together. So what have you already learned about what they liked about working together, what they did together, and how are you thinking about the strengths and weaknesses? And I think the key here is just making it safe for your prospect to tell you the truth. If we ask questions that we only want to hear yeses and positives to, we don't get to the truth and every great deal is built on a foundation of truth. So just to recap what I'm hearing from you, when we sense that there is going to be some sort of friction or blocker or challenge in the deal, we actually signal to our prospect that we are not going to support them through those things when we move away from it and try to keep the call all good vibes and friendly. As uncomfortable as it is to address friction head on, when we do that one, we get more clarity around the deal and the health of it. But too, we show our prospect, hey, I'm going to address and help you solve problems. And that is somebody that they actually want to work with. And then the second thing that I heard from you is the way that I address those frictions, I can ask hard questions, but my tonality needs to be warm and friendly and inviting when I ask it. I'm wondering, Jen, if you could give me an example of maybe a, that same sort of question where you dug into a work with competitor where the tonality is bad. Defensive tonality, right? It would be me hearing that they worked with a competitor and then me going right into, well, let me tell you all the reasons why customers prefer us instead. Now what I've done is I've shown my cards that if this champion were to have put me in front of that CEO, I would behave defensively. That's always in the back of their mind is what is it going to look like on my political capital if I bring this person in? And so those are micro moments where we, we almost walk ourselves out of the room with the executive because they just don't feel confident putting us up there. So Jen, as we've been sitting here, I've been starting to sweat a little bit because I'm realizing that one, the AC isn't on here, but two, I've been thinking a lot of these mistakes. And when we were on the prep call, you were sharing with me that you have a seven step discovery flow that you follow to get buyers to realize they have a problem we're solving. It's worth solving right now and then to start leaning in to learn about how you can actually help solve it. So can you walk me through your discovery flow, please? Yes. So before I go into the seven, let me caveat this with this is not a script and this is not you have to get through all seven in a 30 minute call. This should feel like a natural conversation where you might get through the first three, but then it just gives you a compelling reason for the prospect to take a meeting too with you. So don't feel like you got to jam it all at once. So step one is opening the conversation with credibility. Now 82% of decision makers feel like salespeople are not prepared for sales calls. So that's a very easy bar we can step over. I mentioned this before. The way I do it is all open with before we get too far down the path. You mind if I share what I learned about your role and the business before we get into anything about us. I will tell you most customers are absolutely delighted that you have done preparation. So let's say I'm going to use the same example through all these. Let's say I'm selling a solution that offers mental health benefits to big, bad in video. Everybody wants to close a video. The way I might say that is, you know, it looks like you oversee benefits across the globe. So it looks like you've got an employee population in Taiwan and India and then a heavy population in the US. And what I can tell is an outsider is it looks like the employee base have grown from 42,000 to 75,000 in just a few years. But where am I off? And what I'm doing again is seeking to be corrected, not correct. Even if I did an eight hour research marathon, there might be something in there that I've got wrong. Maybe he just got a new promotion and his job role has expanded. But that is what I'm doing. I'm opening the conversation to signal I've taken the time to research your company and research what you specifically do. From there, step two is I want to anchor on a strategic business objective. This is higher than your prospect. So if you're selling into a public company, it's a CEO. If you're selling into a startup, it's a founder. If you're selling into an education organization, it might be a superintendent. But it's the person at the top of the house. And the reason I want to start there is because that is what the entire organization should be marching towards, the objectives from that CEO. And so I will research that in advance. And I'll say, from what I can tell as an outsider, going back to this example again, it looks like Jensen has this big thesis around output from engineers. So it seems like maximizing output per person is the big metric he's been talking about. Now, I see that your head count has grown about 15%, but your revenue has grown 85%. Meaning that it seems like you're asking a lot of these engineers for output. Now, where am I off on that? Right? And what you're looking for is to get alignment around what is the big thing or things that that that company is trying to measure. Now, obviously, I'm picking things that are going to back into my solution. I'm not just walking into a desert. But I'm using this to ground so I can come back later as to why change matters here. But from there, I mean, why would they already have an objective? How am I, I guess, attaching this to what my product does, Jen? Yep. So here's where we're maintaining that thread. So what we're doing here is we're saying because of that objective, now how does your job, you functional executive, how does that get harder? So notice, we're not jumping around. We're all tying it back because we're going to come back to the company objectives at the end. So here is where, if I'm using that example again, I might say, you know, when I looked at the turnover rates for Nvidia, they're actually quite low. It's 2.7% compared to an industry average of 17.7. But one thing I wonder about is like how much of that is driven by the fact that there's a four year vest period, and I think most employees in Nvidia probably want to hit that vesting period. On top of it, the culture is very engineering heavy, and I wonder with an engineering culture where you're finishing it 2am, and you're starting again at 7am, and stoicism is celebrated, like how many of these folks are really leading on some of the traditional EAP options that are in place today. And notice, I'm not saying you must be failing. I'm presenting it as like true curiosity. Because of these things, I wonder if it gets harder to drive adoption with a traditional EAP, which is what they're using today. Today's show is brought to you by Consensus, which helps you demo keep selling even when you're not in the room. Before I show a demo, I set it up like it might have to work without me. I include these three slides before I drop in. Number one, the biggest problems I learned in Discovery. Number two, how we solve those problems. And number three, what does success look like today slide? You can steal that exact 30-MPC Demo Deck template powered by Consensus. Go check it out in the show notes. Look, our prospects are not showing up to sales calls to answer our questions. And this is what PyPdrug does. If you want to get clear complete sales disability, you can use PyPdrives easy to use and customizable CRM that is designed to be simple from day one and stay easy to use as your team grows. And you can actually put together an entire resource hub with PyPdrug to help you get to Presidents Club and you can get them for free in the 30-MPC PyPdrug Closers Hub. Great sellers drive velocity at every stage of their sale. And one thing that's worked well for me is assigning red line deadlines to my prospects when we kick off vendor review. Great. And again, we're not just walking into a desert. The problem hypothesis is a problem that our product is able to solve. Otherwise, I'm just getting them talking about a problem that's unrelated to what I sell. Exactly. From there, I think your next step is naming the status quo, correct? Correct. And sometimes you know it. Sometimes you don't know it. It is either case. I'm still framing it as unsure. So I will say here, this example, like I know what status quo is. They use their traditional EAP and an EAP. Maybe like two to four percent of your employee base uses it. So it's one of those really interesting cases where someone's like, well, we're at four percent that's industry average. It's good enough. So I have to name it. If I don't know it, going back to the example we had before, I could say, listen, I'm not sure what you're doing today to attack that problem. But one thing I hear a lot when I speak with global benefits leaders is they're doing A, B or C. But how are you different? And again, I'm not asking them to pick A, B or C. I'm just framing it to your point earlier so I can show I have credibility. But I'm seeking to understand what I don't know. And the point there is you cannot defeat an enemy. You do not know. So I need to know what they're doing today to solve the problem. Wow. When I redecorate my condo, I'm putting that on the wall. Whoa. I mean, name the status quo, but I don't fight it. What do I do next? Yeah. You are empathizing with it. So there was a great quote from Brent Addamson who wrote the challenge or sale that always stuck with me throughout my career, which was, before you tell someone why they're wrong, first tell someone why they're right. And what that means is if I come in and say, well, you're an idiot for using an EAP when only 4% of the employee base will use it, the prospect's first instinct is going to fight me. Whether or not they even really believe that I'm right or wrong, it's just this offense defense dynamic. So what I would say instead, if I'm empathizing with status quo, is I can absolutely understand why the organization opted to go with the traditional EAP. Most large companies, your size, use them. And if 4% is widely acceptable, there's probably not a burning platform to change it is there. Now notice what I'm doing here. It's something called reverse selling where I'm not telling them they should change. I'm actually kind of arguing the counter. And when you do that, often what happens is someone will then reveal their cards and say, well, yeah, but here's what we don't like. And now they are the one to name the issue. They may name the issue of why they want to change from the status quo, but it looks like step six is introducing an enemy to the status quo. If they don't share why they would want to change off the status quo, is that what you're doing here? Yes. So the key here is like, I hear a lot when we talk about cost of an action, which is what an enemy to status quo essentially is. Cost of an action is by changing nothing. What is that costing us? And it's often a cost we don't appreciate. What I don't want to do is ask an open end to question of like, well, how much is that costing you? Because if they knew the answer to that question, they probably would have led with it. Right. I think we as salespeople don't convince a prospect to change. Prospects convince themselves to change with the information they have available. We as salespeople can introduce information that sparks that. So my job here is to get them doing a math equation where they're sort of saying my goodness, that is expensive and they're the one to do it. So if I play out this example, it could be like, all right, Jensen is tracking engineering productivity at the token level. But what is your data and benefits show about employee absenteeism, health leave, performance variance with these teams that are carrying the heaviest schedules? And how does negative impact there? How does that actually affect engineering output? So see what I'm doing. I'm going back to the very thing we started at the top, which is Jensen cares a hell of a lot about how much these engineers are outputting. But if I have issues because my folks are burnt out and they're not seeking help because the help isn't on in the hours that they need it between two and seven a.m., now I'm illuminating a problem that is impacting the very thing that Jensen cares the most about. And so that's what I mean by the threat. The threat is consistent through all of them. However, you might learn something throughout where it kind of pivots your theory. That is okay. We don't keep charging through it. That would be an assumption maker. It's where we stop and say, help me understand. And I wasn't expecting to hear that. Tell me a little bit more about that. And that buys us some time to think about how we pull back to that thread. Yeah. I wasn't expecting to see the last piece on your list, Jen, which is a high impact close. That's like your anti-aliate high pressure. No pressure gloves. I think one of the things we are often afraid to hear is no or not right now. And that results in us spending a lot of time working deals that we're never deals to begin with. So the two questions I learned to ask before I leave the call, first let me say how you frame them. I will say at this point in the conversation, we got about five minutes left, all I'm asking for is your complete and utter transparency. You don't have to tell me what you think I want to hear. Is that okay? And with a conversation like this, you've earned the right for their trust and transparency. And then I'll say great, I have two questions to ask. Number one, based on what we've covered so far today, does this feel like a problem worth solving? And then I shut up. I do not try to convince them that it is. I let them talk. It will either be a yes or a no. If it's a no, I have absolute right to ask, can you help me understand how come? And then again, I shut up. I'm just seeking to understand. My second question, if I get a yes, is does this feel like a problem worth solving right now? Almost the same question as the first, but you might get a very different answer. If the answer is no, which it often is, it again allows me the opportunity to say, can you help me understand what has to happen first or what's the order of events? And the reason I'm doing this is because my job is not to close every single discovery call. My job is to leave a call knowing exactly what that prospect sentiment is towards solving this problem and solving this problem now. If I don't ask those questions and I assume that their interest or their chattyness means they want to move forward, that's where I get into situations where I have a completely overinflated funnel and then everything kind of dies at stage two. And so it is uncomfortable to ask these questions in the beginning because you might hear a no and we don't like hearing that, but it will give you a much more accurate read of what needs to happen for this prospect. And then more broadly, what do I need to do from a pipeline generation perspective to fill in the gap? That's a wrap. Jen, this has been phenomenal. Folks, we talked about some data in this episode around selling two executives. And Jen, you were kind enough to partner with 30 NPC and the team over at Gong where we analyzed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of sales cycles that had executives in them. And we put together a full data report on the best and worst practices for selling two executives, multi-threading and overcoming the status quo. You can get it in the link to this episode. Thank you for listening. Thank you for watching and we'll see you on the next episode of 30 NPC. because if the goal was 80, you're in trouble. If it's 20, you're crushing. That's why you need context. But trend can change things. If you averaged 80 meetings a week for the last quarter, and then you only hit 40 this week, something went wrong. Now we built a guide with the ambition on how to actually use data to coach your team without becoming a dashboard manager. It's free in the show notes. Get it free in the show notes.