How To Balance Prospecting and Discovery
There’s an interesting dynamic that I see among sales teams. While there seems to be an increased focus on prospecting, sellers aren’t spending enough time doing good discovery work to make those prospecting efforts really pay off.
Yes, our ICP is identified and properly segmented. Sure, the outreach you do is tailored and (hopefully) relevant. By the time you get them on the phone, you’ve got a pretty good idea how you can help them.
This is where most salespeople drop the ball.
You finally get an opportunity to have a meaningful exchange with your prospect, and all of your preparation basically encourages you to pigeonhole them into the right fit for one of your solutions. Because ‘time is money,’ you’re in a hurry and you make an offer. When it gets rejected, you blame the product, the price, or the prospect, and you move on to the next one.
The problem? You forgot about discovery
This is a very important phase of the sales process, and one that you shouldn’t overlook. You need to ask questions that dig into the specifics of your prospect’s situation. Even your ideal clients are not all the same.
The questions you ask can and should differentiate you from your competition. You’re doing discovery with them, not on them, they’re learning a lot about the way you sell in the process (more on this next week).
Most importantly, you’re creating the necessary context for your solution to make the biggest impact. If you do this right, your interview will help them see their own situation and the potential outcomes in a different light...hopefully one in which your own solution shines.
The reason? You were in a hurry
I can understand sellers overlooking a true discovery session because they’re relying on segmentation. You’ve probably been trained to do this, and if there is a good product/market fit, you can actually get a way with it fairly often.
What I don’t understand is why salespeople are in such a hurry all the time. It’s as if good discovery is avoided simply because it takes too long. That’s really problematic because of how important it is, and if you don’t have time to do it right, you certainly don’t have time to do it twice.
The balance? What is there to balance?
During a recent webinar, I was asked how I balance my time between prospecting and discovery. This question intrigued me because I don’t see those two things as being fundamentally different.
Prospecting is not just the act of reaching out and getting people’s attention. It’s much more profound than that. Prospecting is demonstrating to your potential customers that you are someone worth talking to with something worth talking about. It’s not only making them aware that you have a solution, it’s creating the context for why that solution can be effective in helping them achieve their personal or business objectives. Good prospecting creates tension and demonstrates expertise. You might like this book about it.
What you’re trying to do is help your customers see what they can’t see on their own. And that’s what discovery is all about, Charlie Brown.
When you see these things as being symbiotic in the sales process rather than elements that need to be balanced, something becomes pretty clear: you should never short-change your discovery sessions because you have more calls to make. The reason you make those calls is because they lead to discovery sessions!
Jason Bay put it very simply when he said to prioritize your time on activities nearest to the bottom of your funnel. I had never heard it put that way, but it makes a ton of sense. Spend more time on the deals most likely to close, then make sure there are more deals to work on.
How do you feel about this? Do you have trouble with this balance? Are you looking at ‘balance’ the wrong way? Are you giving yourself enough time to let the discovery process work for you? Let’s talk about it. Hit reply or send me a message in my online community.
I’ve also got a lot more on this topic coming next week. If you want a sneak peek, you can join me on Clubhouse Saturday, Jan. 30. where I’ll be talking about professional discovery. Or, listen to my episode on the Sales Hustle podcast where that concept was literally conceived in real time.
Would you like to discuss this topic? Join our conversation in the Rethink The Way You Sell Community.
Jeff Bajorek
Real. Authentic. Experience.
There’s a big difference between knowing how to sell and being able to. Jeff Bajorek spent over a decade in the field as a top performer. He’s been in your shoes. He knows what it will take. He can help you succeed.
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