Quit blaming lack of discovery for your loss.

I think it's time for us to have an honest conversation. We need to quit blaming every lost deal on lack of or insufficient discovery. Instead, it's time to take some responsibility by identifying why you think discovery caused your loss.

A) You were too late in the process to perform effective discovery.

We've all been there. A hot deal comes rolling in, and we're too far behind to put our process in place. The client has a decision to make imminently and has no time to tell you any more than the basics. But wait, the salesperson has a good feeling about this and should go in and rock the standard demo.?

I'm not saying a good Sales Engineer cant discover on the fly and write a demo in real-time. However, my experience is that it's hard, and you need to have absolute mastery of the product to pave the road as you walk it. In these scenarios, you walk the tightrope of allowing the salesperson to discover during the presentation and run the risk of a misaligned message in the presentation vs. demonstration phase. Maybe if you sell a commoditized product with a limited scope, this will work, but anyone that sells bespoke or tailored applications will find themselves running hard.?

Being too late to discover falls into two categories: unavoidable lateness and avoidable lateness.?

If it was unavoidable, and all attempts to get in a call before the demo fail, don't beat yourself up. Chances are you were last-minute column fodder.?

If it was at all avoidable, you didn't earn the win, suck it up.?

B) You failed to listen to what you learned in discovery.?

Failing to use discovery is not as accusatory as it sounds. A discovery-based loss, even though you performed adequate discovery, often comes down to two scenarios.?

First, despite the discovery, the clients' needs did not align with the narrative you wanted to follow. Perhaps they felt like they were not ready for (insert gadget du jour), but you and your salesperson thought better and decided to force-feed them the pitch. You've been doing this for years now, and you know what's suitable for your audience. Granted, I believe in solving problems my clients didn't think they had. Still, to deliberately force-feed them a solution to a problem they are not ready to solve, I would expect them to push back.?

Secondly, you may not understand the impacts or hidden meanings in the discovery you collected. An example of this happened to me early in my career. My prospect struggled with controlling project budgets and needed the product to help them maintain the budgets. I, of course, answered this in the demonstration with a solid 15 minutes on how you could set budget caps and manage budget approvals. However, during the post-loss interview, I learned with horror that the client marked our Budget Controls as zero, as in nothing there. Had I took an extra minute to dig into the requirement, had I parroted back what I thought the answer looked like, I would have gained the insight I needed to see that the client wanted a report, not just a system control.?

Sales discovery is not a phase or stage of the sales cycle. Instead, discovery is about eliciting the client's story, gaining insight into their present, and a vision of their future. Discovery is also an effective way to verify your understanding is accurate. In my example, had I used the discovery not only to ask but to discover if I understood, that logo might have been under my belt.?

C) You presented a weaker vision of the future that was not as aligned or as compelling as the competition

Perhaps your product lacked the features required by the prospect, or the story you told that put the elements into the users' workflow wasn't as straightforward as you had planned.?

In almost every opportunity, the better story wins.?

Use this loss as an opportunity to institute a post-win/loss conversation to gain as much understanding as you can about how your solution demonstration is received. From my experience, these conversations are invaluable in shaping how I pitch certain elements, how I would navigate complicated concepts without 'looking complicated,' and learn whether the competition has changed up their pitch in a way that makes us look less attractive.?

Mitigate this risk by understanding the parties to the demo, the challenges faced by the stakeholders, listening not only for similarities but also what is different.?

D) You were never going to win anyway.?

Sigh, the stinker of the bunch. During the discovery call, you learn the client's complexity or user count is outside the bounds of your ideal client. Perhaps you hear a hard requirement for a feature you don't have, or maybe the client wants on-prem, and you only offer SaaS. While on their own, no one issue would have been a showstopper, but the lies we tell ourselves whisper sweet nothings in your mind and tell you that this is the one, the deal you bring back from the edge and into your portfolio.?

But then you lose, and you immediately forget all the signs; if only you got another discovery call, or if only the Sales Engineer did something different.

Astute readers will think, why pursue a deal that you know you cant win? But, of course, I am biased on this one, so let us agree I don't care for it as a practice but have agreed to it when it served a larger goal.?

If you don't win a deal that, in retrospect, you could not have won, move on. Discovery was not your problem.??

In closing?

As I close this article, I want to offer a morsel of hope as you consume and consider what changes you can bring to your SE game. Of course, losing is part of the job, like winning, and while we want more of the latter than the former. Besides, there is always some lesson gained in defeat.?

Blaming a loss on lack of or insufficient discovery is an excuse you can use once. Why? You are either unwilling or unable to make the change to end the pattern.?

If you feel like you cannot make the change, talk to your SE leadership about your struggles. Also, connect with PreSales and SE peers on LinkedIn, and be sure to read the copious articles on discovery by the venerable Peter Cohan. A community of peers is here to share your burden and guide you to success.?

For those unwilling to change...step aside lest you be made obsolete by the armies of talented Sales Solution Engineers chomping at your heels to advance.?