Doing Discovery: The Single Most Important Element of Software Sales and Buyer Enablement Processes

by Peter Cohan

A head of sales commented, “80% of my team believes they do a good job with discovery, but sadly they do not – they don’t know what they don’t know…!”

Where do you stand with your discovery skills?Level 1: Uncovers statements of pain;Level 2: Uncovers pain and explores more deeply;Level 3: Uncovers pain, explores deeply, broadens the pain and investigates the impact;Level 4: Uncovers pain, explores and broadens, investigates impact and quantifies;Level 5: Uncovers pain, explores and broadens, investigates impact, quantifies and reengineers vision;Level 6: Applies these skills to the broad range of prospects represented across the Technology Adoption Curve, “burn victims”, disruptive and new product categories, transactional sales cycles, and other scenarios;Level 7: Integrates and aligns the skills above into a cohesive discovery methodology.Most sales, presales, and customer-facing teams are operating at Level 2 or 3, with a few at Level 4 – this leaves a lot of room for improvement!

And, as Cohan notes, “the vendor who is perceived by the prospect as doing a superior job in discovery is in a competitively advantageous position.”

Reading and following the exercises in Doing Discovery can transform individuals, teams, and organizations from undifferentiated sellers into high-performing practitioners who achieve their sales objectives while truly enabling buyers, resulting in mutually successful outcomes that endure.

Genres: Technology

386 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 9, 2022

Reviews

[John Klassen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Have you ever found a handyman who was so good that you didn't want to give their name out?

That's how I feel about Great Demo. Doing the last thing first transformed my demos and I don't want my competitors to find out!

Peter knows the art and science of demos. He's a trained scientist who gets to the root of why things work and don't work. He's mastered his art from doing demos for decades.

You can see Peter speaking online but there is no substitute for reading the book to build the foundation of your Great Demos.

[Ken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Levels of discocery
1. Uncovers pain
2. Uncovers pain and explores more deeply. Why is excel not great?
3. Explores and broadens the pain. Make it tangible.
4. Quantifies the impact. Must find a delta using customers numbers. Days or dollars.
5. Re-engineers vision. Agrees on specific capabilties that the customer wants that snowflakes offers.
6. Applies all these depending on customer on the technology adoption curve
7. Bakes in all 6 into a cohesive sales mehology for my industry, being a data platform saas solution. Have simple discovery doxuemnts to fill out.

[Mark Oliver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me longer than I had hoped and the principles are good for self assessment but felt some of it was repetitive - worth reading however as there is some great takeaways most impactful thing for me was my self assement on my current level of expertise in discovery - it has giving me a guide to reach the following levels now to put a plan in place to get there

[Grace Naughton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for work - I didn’t love it as much as similar reads like Start With Why.

I think part of it is I’m biased towards the frameworks I already know, and this book presents very similar concepts but just slightly differently.

It’s also *so* American.

Would to find a sales / tech / business book that is Aussie centric, so I can actually relate and apply it to what I am realistically doing.

[Kirsten Gesenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Um. In a book about great demos we start with 4 (!) forwards, about the author, preface, acknowledgements (?!) and an introduction. I guess do what I say...not what I do...

[Shane Meade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Structurally it's all over the place. Too many spelling mistakes. Some decent content here too.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been in the SC role for over 15 years and often find myself in the mentoring role at this stage. What Peter captures well in this book is all the various threads of what we should do and probably, usually sometimes do. But very few of us do them, do them consistently, and do them well. And thus, it can be a hard thing to teach. I know, from trying to do so.

I appreciate the structure of the book pulling all those skills and practices into a framework. It tries to turn discovery into a repeatable pattern that is easier to teach and practice. He augments the framework with examples, both concrete and imaginative (who knew catering was so much work!)

This book is helping me to take a closer look at how I approach discovery and I'm trying to use the framework within it to improve the consistency of how I execute on it. I've already incorporated (stole) examples from the book to help in explaining concepts to my mentees. Thanks Peter.