Secrets to Mastering Discovery Calls

if you want to increase your closure and stop losing deals to competitors you need to master Discovery that's the right questions at the right time in the right way now in today's session I'm breaking exactly how the top Tech sellers uncover pain build urgency and drive decisions with better Discovery hey I'm Marcus Shan former number one sales director SOS Corporation where I Le 110% sales organization to profitably deliver over $190 million a year and now I'm a sales training coach of the fastest growing companies in rep in the world now here's a hard truth weak

Discovery equals lost deals if you're asking the wrong questions or worse just taking what the prospect say a face value you're losing control of your deals that means more stall deals surprise objections and wasted pipeline that's costing you money now in today's video you'll see a live session I did with the sell better team and over 200 Sales leaders in rep in which I uncovered four key things number one the most powerful Discovery questions that uncover real pain number number two how to navigate multiple stakeholders and cover the true decision maker number three how to

avoid weak outdated questions that kill your credibility and number four how to use Discovery to drive urgency and eliminate objections I'll be pulling frame right from my proven Playbook six figure sale Secrets Andy stick around to the very end I'll share a simple tweak that can instantly boost your closure in your very next call let's dive in do you have an overall philosophy on Discovery before we jump in yeah I think ultim ultimately we get stuck into the sales stage process we're like hey first we're going to book a meeting we're going to have Discovery

then we're going to do a demo then we're going to do a proof of concept blah blah blah BL blah whatever depending on your sales process and I think it's good it's useful to understand as a whole but what I always think about from a philosophy perspective is Discovery is really a phase it's really a philosophy it's a way of thinking your entire process so you should always be thinking how can I learn more about the situation on every single interaction with your prospect and when you think this way you don't think of I did

my Discovery I'm good to go you're thinking of hey wherever I am in the quote unquote sales process I'm going to continue to dive in deeper and uncover more what's going on because every time you have a meeting with your prospect there's time that goes between that last meeting to that current meeting things change all the time whether it's to them their needs their wants their desires internal initiatives stakeholder changes Etc and the worst thing we can do is just assume nothing has changed so on today's question we going to dive into today these are

ones where frankly they're going to be probably uncomfortable for a good majority of you to want to ask but the most beautiful part is these are types of questions when you actually uncover early on and throughout the process it will actually increase your win rate and'll help you better qualify opportunities and on top of that we know a sales process is never linear so when you uncover some of the details in the process this allows you to set different next steps to potentially eliminate object that might occur down the road so that's why from a

philosophy perspective ABC doesn't stand for always be closing it's always be curious if you had that mind space of that you're going to run a better Discovery for the entire process and you'll have better control on your deals because you're always seing of the next steps and how you want to get ahead I like that a lot always be curious so we're not just limiting our Discovery to this one step in the phase and it's only going to happen in the beginning as things come up we can dig in and ask more questions 100% so

I have nine questions from you here I'm going to pull up the first five and I just want you to talk us through a couple maybe your favorites where you start let me know what's best beautiful we'll go step by step I'm very simple right the very first one this is a great question especially early on to really uncover this is assuming you've uncovered all the core things that they know they want you uncover the pains the problems Etc and you're going to be diving now into what I call the decision-making process if you will

it's really really simple so for example number one hey so let's assume we proceed forward and you decide our solution is best fit for your needs who's all involved in bringing in a vendor like us so this is intentionally just an open question you going to throw out there now obviously you can tweak this over time and you can build context because of your role but this is just designed to open them up so you can see what's going on and what I found generally speaking is sometimes they have no idea yeah and that's okay

so that allows you to start diving in deeper and you'll see there's some other prompt question help with that right because sometimes we get Happ years especially when we talk to what's known as a technical buyer so a technical buyer and this is based off strategic selling a technical buyer is someone that can't say yes but they can say no they ultim kind of screen you out if you will so they'll say something like this they'll say hey lesie oh it's pretty much my decision I just need to run past Bob real quick or I

just got to run by some people internally real quick so they really play off the other people so that's an example you might hear that so that tells you like okay you don't want to get happy ear there cuz sometime you get happy like oh they just told me they're a decision maker actually they just told you they are not the decision maker they just told you there's other people involved which is okay they might pull the trigger so they might actually even sign the doc you sign but they are still influenced by other people

so we want to find out who is actually what's known as the economic buyer and it's the person that can say yes when everyone else says no and they can say no when everyone else says yes for instance like I've had this happen before where let's just say for example if they have budgeted $100,000 for this project right they need get one loss approval from somebody else that somebody else can take the 100K mov elsewhere they have more power right or they could say hey it's not enough we can allocate more resources I can actually

pull from this other department and move budget over so that's is a true economic buyer right there they can actually have power to move and release funds or completely reallocate funds so when you ask that question it tease it up okay I think it also involves so and but it's pretty much me now you go deeper hey cool what's that exact process look like step by step in your mind I want you to imagine if your prospect had to take out a Google doc and write down an instruction manual for how to get a deal

done what's that look like what's step one step two step three so for instance they get done with the conversation today what do they do next do they go back and write a business case up do they first gather some information from other lower level stakeholders do they talk to other department heads first first do we to go through legal first go to CFO first and we don't want to assume so we want to start diving in what's that process look like exactly who's all involved notice even how my tonality is shifting a little bit

right so depending on the prospect I may need to adjust it to get them to feel comfortable share the information because what we want here is the truth allows you to guide the conversation move it differently so for instance If part of the process they say yeah it's pretty much my decision of course like I'm going to talk to my team first like some of my engineers in my team and then but it's going to be me I'm going to sign off on everything it's going to be me I don't even anybody I'm must make

sure my team's bought in so maybe they are the economic buyer but now there's potentially Engineers you have to get bought in oh interesting hey tell me a little more about making sure your team is bought in what do you mean by that specifically so you can see how this starts to Rabbit Hole a little bit right where you might go a different path so now you might find out hey so on your engineering team are you going to talk to all of them or are there certain people that maybe you really trust you're kind

of your locker room leaders that you really value their feedback oh yeah for sure there is Lisa she's our chief engineer she's been coming for like 10 years I'm going get her feedback she's also grumpy person so I know she'll give it to me straight great hey aside from leis is there anybody else so now we're diving deeper just uncover even who who those players are because now you could just rely on less you're trying to sell to them right or that may shift your whole process so now you want to introduce maybe a proof

of concept or trial or you want to have a separate meeting with Lisa or any other XYZ stakeholders this really will shift your process because now you're diving in deep you hit on a couple things I just want to like zoom into really quick so the first one is your tone because I think sometimes like it can be offputting and people are like it's me I'm the only person you need to talk to right now right it's they don't want to get other people involved because they're afraid of what that looks like so I think

like that tone piece that you mentioned is so important and then someone mentioned in the chat here how do you know what you're getting is correct how do you know if that research is right is there any cues that you feel I see that you're like digging in deeper a lot of it's your tone is there something you do to check yourself there 100% so there's a couple things so even before you walk into whether it's the first call or X number of calls you should have a hypothesis potentially of how the process is actually

decided because sometimes some companies have no idea because maybe they never made a purchasing decision before of the magnitude that you're potentially selling or maybe they're smaller they don't have a formal SOP Center operating procedure so you can also bring a hypothesis to the table so let's say for example yeah that's a good question I'm not really sure but I'll probably involve the CEO so then you can say Okay Hey listen so typically what we have seen such as when I was working with sell better is we actually met with X person here XY person

there and they're in these roles because their feedbacks are really valuable potentially that may make sense in your situation what do you think so you te it up as well and if You' done the homework of even like researching who the names are you mention them for example I was meeting with a sales director who want me to come and basically train their team and I knew there's a sales VP and a CEO so I asked a very similar question what's that process look like they're like oh I think it's pretty much me I'm like

generally speaking I'm not a rookie here this is what I found you company your size and your org type usually they we want to get a feedback and buy it at least from this sales VP I think his name is Mike and the owner Albert do you think that they may potentially want to have influence on decision of potentially who you want to choose for sales training and they're like yeah that's a good point I think they actually probably will my got it so now we can go deep and really start setting the next steps

as part of it so that's really really important so in terms of answering the question of how do I know if what they're knew is correct there's a couple things you want to look for so number one what's our body language look like this is really important these are some of the subtleties of sales that people don't talk about but like if they're like H I think you can tell like the confidence shifts their tonality is like uncertain and that's really important now it's not 100% but if they say nope it's 100% me there's nobody

else and if you're not sure you can pressure test a little Hey listen so typically what I found in simiz organizations this is who else is also involved does it happen to the same case in your situation or is it totally different nope totally different it's literally just me I've been here 20 years I make all the decisions like there's nobody else okay so at some point you got to take them from Face Value a bit their tonality is confident their conviction is high and they're saying that now what's great is if they're telling you

these things and they seem very certain in it the beautiful part is if they tell you it must be true so down the road in your sales process if it's suddenly shifts this allows you to utilize as ammunition to bring back up CU suddenly they're like oh we need to involve Albert the CEO it's got makes sense tell me a little more about that you go a little bit deeper and then it's very easy bring back and say Hey listen I'm a little confused so when you and I spoke actually a couple weeks ago you

had mentioned it was 100% your decision and I'm confused now because sounds like Albert wants to be involved did something change between our last conversation and today yeah some it's a very clear direct conversation but not even my tonality do even like I'm smiling while I'm saying it it could be something that's uncomfortable but you're li like lifting some of that discomfort for them 100% so this is valuable because really at the end of the day all you care about is get to the truth yeah that's what you want because then you know if it's

really a truly qualified opportunity or are you working with a tire kicker who's going to basically spin your wheels and waste your time and will inflate your pipeline inaccurately which you don't want no we don't want that your managers don't want that I think that leads you really nicely like you're asking all these questions and then asking what's the most important number four here what's most important for them is giving you ammo for your next call potentially or what you're going to send them in terms of what they can take to their team that's right

so this is powerful right you start finding out like hey so tell me like what's most important for them how does this align to their initiatives so this is like really powerful now because you're just doing your homework with your next conversation is going to be with that person or multiple people it guides you a little bit as well but on top of that based on your experience what would they most critical about these type of things help you understand what's the thought process of that person so even if you write a multi-thread email which

you should after this to that person you can sync some of these things back to them so this help you bridge the gap and start working other stakeholders as well as part of the process so that's really valuable most are just trying to focus on trying to sell at singular person but the reality is you can have probably between five to seven different stakeholders and majority of deals if not more Enterprise so the more you can gather the lay the land pictures it's almost like sports you're going to watch G taped of your competitors and

you just trying to see who all the players are what are the strengths what are the weaknesses and based off the players on a table I'm going to determine different plays I'm going to run and this is basically what you're doing you have a hypothesis already that you do your research on but now when you're actually live with a person that's their company a representative you can uncover more stuff and it could be right or could be wrong we don't really know we're going to trust them as much as we can based on how they

deliver the information but we're going to use that information now to help us with other parts of the process because it's far easier now for example like you get a lot of information here and's say maybe when you meet the it's called the cxo now you have a really powerful point of view you can bring to the table so it's much better to say Hey listen based on my conversation with lesie she had told me your coord issues are X Y and Z for the next five years of organization because of that talking with us

this is what we uncovered as the challenges mhm so here's potentially how I see how we can fit in our solution to help you with this is that correct does that sound right if you had a really good job they're like wow you nailed it that that's exactly our situation okay there are more apps actually have a conversation now with you yeah Tim and Laura in the chat talking about like differences in regions usually if I'm selling UK in general I'll ask permission for that first before the multi-threading and just be like hey is it

okay if I copy this person in and then my bonus is that I always compliment the person that I'm I've been working with as like a starter if it's especially if it's going up the chain hey it's been awesome working with Marcus and the way that he captures your company he's such a great Ambassador for your organization and he's so strategic and here's all the things like whatever it is to like make sure that I'm propping him up if it's going up the chain but I'm always asking permission first from that person before I do

that that's right but I do think there's definitely some Regional differences take take some Nuance in there I want to get to I see some questions in the Q&A section if you have other questions you want to add in there you can also upvote other people's if you want to get those answered we'll jump to that as soon as we wrap up there's a few more Discovery questions that I want you to grab a few here yeah let's jam on these so what other concerns do you believe they may have so this is powerful because

let's just say for example like in some situations you will just never ever talk to the economic buyer that's just a reality OB we do our best to get in front of them but that's just it may happen right but here's the thing sometime I find with some of our Champions they also get Happ ear too they get really excited because their problems are going to get solved right youve done a great job selling to them and they think it's going to be a slam dunk selling internally and they actually have not thought through how

they're going to sell internally in the worst case scenario so questions like this starts get them to think yeah what if they say no basically so it's hey so what other concerns do you believe that they may have right and get and stop talking and just like these are intentionally be like one at a time because you want them to like think it through let's sink in and you can also build some context around this for example might be like hey let's see so obviously Bob You' know for like 10 years you've worked for a

long time I'm sure you have tried to move bring other products to the table with Bob based off our conversation what do you believe might be some other concerns that they might have so this again opens them up because you start thinking actually like you know Bob's a real stickler about X okay so if Bob is a stickler about x what do you believe we should do right now to make sure we eliminate that potential concern he might have what do you recommend we do up front and sure it's addressed before it even occurs the

same type of question all right so this is like really intentional because this gets them thinking through a selling strategy remember most of these people unless you sell into sales or actually back up even if you do sell to sales organizations most people are really bad at selling internally they have no idea how to do it most of them lack the skills and acum to actually influence internally to get deals done get things done we have to guide them and teach them how to do this so this is really important especially let's say for example

it's a CFO right you could say Hey listen and they don't bring it up Hey listen usually I find for other organizations if you're sell since we we have to get Tom the CFO on board usually they want to see a business case to really prove out the ROI like do you feel that's going to happen in our situation here so they may not be thinking that but they're like yeah actually I think so okay cool so us what recommend you and I work on drum together so this way you go we have a case

to work together would that be fair that makes a lot of sense cool I'm curious though is Tom even aware the problem exists so I want to find out now what's the awareness level of Tom or the cxo right so that again this this helps you uncover like things that you might need to have them do next convers hasn't happened the likelihood of your deal closing especially within a given timeline is like decreasing as the minute 100% so now you can change your strategy completely it's like all right cool you and I need to build

a business case lesie this is your job though between now and our conversation in a week to build the business case is I need you to set time don't talk about me don't talk about our solution I literally want you to St a time with Tom bring him a state of the union of the current problem in the impact your number one goal is to make sure Tom is on board understand there's a big problem that needs to be solved and you're going to look for Solutions you don't have one yet is that a fair

ask so that's like getting them to think ahead they're like oh okay you're right so you can see how when you you do a deeper Discovery it actually will shift how you run the process because we know it's going to have multiple stakeholders we have to make sure we know what the rules of engagement are so we can run the game effectively I think this is the definition of getting on the same side and selling together and being able to gain that trust I do want a quick hot take for me you gave us all

these great questions to ask what are some questions that you feel like we should avoid asking maybe some of the ones that have been out there for a while floating around do you have any things where you like avoid this at all cost oh yeah first off generally really cheesy questions I find generally just don't really work so for instance one of the ones this is actually this years ago remember my company bought another company huge this a billion dollar company bought out and this company this is like the rep's favorite question to ask which

was what's known as the magic wand question so they would go to Prospect and say listen I you imagine I had a magic wand if I could wave this magic wand and it would solve all your problems and have a dream solution for you what would that look like now I feel stupid even saying that out loud but this is like their number one go-to question and the kind of sad thing is I listen to call recording from clients and some of them I incorporate that I'm like whoa time out let's stop asking that question

that is number one it sounds cheesy you right it doesn't really make sense and number two like why are you asking that so questions like that is that's like weird right don't ask questions like that another one are questions that will like your prospects are smart and sophisticated are questions that are trapping your prospect right do you want to save money with your business yeah of course do you want to make more money with your business of course do you want to be more efficient yeah of course I be more efficient so like questions like

those ultimately what happens is they decrease your credibility buyers today they have probably to proba 10 plus channels before that you have a conversation with you so you want to make sure that time you have with them you're asking question that actually drive impact and show you're not like any other sales professional right and most sales professionals are not going to ask questions that I've already shared so far they ask maybe very surface level but they don't go deeper so you don't want to ask these terrible questions I just said so you want to be

able to have that impact and go deeper so you actually pull out the real magic which is really deep in the root of the question I think that it can erode trust too some of those things where you're trapping them and then that's going to lead to where we get the really surface level or the kind of separate questions there's a few things in the chat here when people have their cameras off or you're on like an old school phone call and you're doing your discovery that way is there a way to interpret body language

are there like certain verbal Clues instead of visual clues that you're looking for great beautiful part of those is I've been selling for a long time so we start on the phones yeah no camera back so there was no camera back then so you actually have it's almost generally speaking if you lose one sense hopefully your other sens become much more tuned tightened if you will so on the phones like I would listen very intently to actually the exact verbiage they would use to their tonality right so let me give you an example so if

I say Hey listen let's assume this goes really well aside from myself is anybody else you need to consult with internally before you bring a vendor like us on board and they say something like oh it's pretty much me pretty much me the Zach vernacula words is not decisive it's not crisp it's not concise it's not tight and I want to me it's like oh interesting pretty much is is it thing so if I asked my kid how crowd he was oh I tried you tried like to me it's a different level so understand the

words they use are important but also how they say it so is there a level of conviction and confidence now take this to the grant Sal because there's different personality types you sell into so if they have more amable personality they're not going to be like 100% it's me but they might say something like it's my decision so if I'm not unsure if it comes off a little soft soap because they're anal I might say cool just make sure on the same page awesome so typically I want to talk to someone like yourself lesle you

using using the involve X Y and Z decision makers is that happen to be the same in your case or not at all in your situation nope not at all okay all right like you got to take at one point eventually you have to say all right I feel pretty good about that right but it's a judgment call and spot you got to make but it might potentially be a pink flag depending on how they say it still if you are in the in the chat here and you haven't met Marcus before he has so

many more like really cool Frameworks and just puts out a ton of content around good questions to be asking how to ask them I think more the soft skills too that are harder to grasp on to in just like a really easy way so I do want to drop your YouTube channel and your LinkedIn for anyone who wants to connect with you honestly time flew way too fast today oh yeah right so we are at time but go check out Marcus's YouTube channel because there are some really cool Frameworks there this is like scratching the

surface we need another show Marcus we should probably a 4 Hour show next time's put it on the book done I love it I so appreciate you being here with us thank you for sharing just like this gems of digging into Discovery we're putting it on the books I'm messaging you right after this we're going to good we need to chat more thanks for ra me on thanks everyone for being here that was awesome