How to Run The Perfect Discovery Call (Without Feeling Salesy)

All righty, so today we are going to be teaching you how to build your discovery process. We are going to do that by

process. We are going to do that by going through the four big pieces of discovery call. Your upfront agenda that

discovery call. Your upfront agenda that you use to make sure that the conversation doesn't go off the rails from the start so that you can control the call by anchoring on the purpose, the plan, and the outcome. From there,

we are going to teach you how to navigate the hardest part of discovery, which is the discovering on the call.

We're going to be teaching you how to consistently uncover massive problems worth solving that you can actually solve. And we're going to be doing that

solve. And we're going to be doing that by teaching you how to build what is called a discovery tree. From there, one of the biggest mistakes sellers make on their discovery calls is they don't show

enough or give enough so that the customer is like, "Hey, I believe you can solve my problem. I want to learn more." So, we're going to teach you how

more." So, we're going to teach you how to give your Harbor Tour Pimp My Ride demo. And then we're going to finish by

demo. And then we're going to finish by teaching you how to run the five-minute drill, which is a tool to not just get next steps, but also uncover process, people, and timing at the end of your

discovery call. By the end of today, you

discovery call. By the end of today, you are going to have everything that you need, whether you are building a discovery flow for your team or you're building it out for yourself, you will have everything that you need to master your

discovery calls, where you never have calls go off the rails, where the customer pulls on your agenda, where you consistently uncover massive problems worth solving, where you always get next

steps on the books with deals that are actual deals and not wastes of your time. So, let's dive in and start with

time. So, let's dive in and start with the agenda. Armand.

the agenda. Armand.

All right, so let's talk about setting agendas, which I know is is definitely the sexiest topic in sales.

The reason that this is an important is a lot of times reps will jump right into discovery.

And in our minds, it makes sense. You

need to uncover a problem on a discovery call before I show you software. But in

a prospect's mind, they want to see the product, they want to see price, and the agenda is your opportunity to reset that expectation upfront instead of having them be kind of pissed off that you start peppering them with discovery questions.

A lot of agendas are extremely long-winded.

There are three basic things that need to be communicated in an agenda. Number

one, what is the purpose of this call?

In this case, it is we're going to see if there's any opportunity for us to help Acme level up your sales reps.

Right? I don't know if there is, but we're going to see.

Step number two is the plan.

This is the agenda part of the agenda.

So, we're going to share our point of view on where we might be helpful to your org. I'd love to have you beat it

your org. I'd love to have you beat it up and add more. And then from there I'll give you a couple ideas around where we help. Maybe we do like a 5-minute arbiter. And this is when I

5-minute arbiter. And this is when I kind of like lower their blood pressure on like, "Hey, I I kind of need to know what you're doing today before I can show you something, but I promise like if if there's a clear use case, I'll

give you like a quick 5-minute arbiter at the end." That usually like gets them to calm down on the just show me a demo thing.

And the final piece is the outcome. And

so, this is where you can do two things.

Number one, you can remove sales pressure from them so that they have a more honest conversation with you. At the end of this conversation, I don't know if we're going to be a fit and we can have an

honest conversation. You can tell me if

honest conversation. You can tell me if it sounds good or not. That's number

one.

If it goes well, I'm going to set the expectation for the next steps and for multi-threading. If

it goes well, we're going to do a full curriculum deep dive normally, and we would usually loop in some other people from your team just so to make sure that this like resonates with everyone else in your org. And if not, um I will sit here and either cry or list off every feature until convinced otherwise. And

I'll usually get like some sort of crack of a smile there at the beginning of this point of the call. And that's your agenda. Purpose, plan, outcome. It

agenda. Purpose, plan, outcome. It

should take about 30 to 45 seconds to communicate all this stuff. It should

not be a super long-winded, long-drawn-out agenda. That's all you

long-drawn-out agenda. That's all you need.

The two pro tips that I'll add here.

One, on your purpose, Armand, what you're also doing with this is you are releasing sales pressure. A lot of prospects show up to calls and like, "All right, this person's going to be pitch heavy." And you're like, "The goal

pitch heavy." And you're like, "The goal is to like even see if we can solve your problems. To even see if you we can help your sales team." Right? You're going

arms up, you're disarming from the front. The other thing that you are

front. The other thing that you are doing is you're beginning with the end in mind. You are saying, "Look, if this

in mind. You are saying, "Look, if this goes well, if we pass the vibe check, this is what we would typically do next." And that does two things. One,

next." And that does two things. One,

again, it removes the prospect's uncertainty of like, "Where is this thing even going? Am I ever really going to see the product?" And then two, if they disagree with that next step, that gives them a chance to already start to

voice that up front. And if you're like, "Oh my gosh, this is not worth my time."

you suss that out early. And so, you lead them and show them, "This is a seller who actually knows what I'm talking about and what I'm doing. I am

not just a pitcher, I'm a trusted advisor Armand."

advisor Armand." I'll give you a third pro tip, which is Nick, you know I love what we call Easter eggs, which are little things that make the prospect smile, but also are like a wink wink, "Hey, I did my

research before this thing."

Yes.

I will usually say, "If this doesn't go well, I will write something in and not even mention it." So, for example, if I was selling to Nick, I might say, "If no, put on headgear and

battle to first take down."

And I will like not address this at all.

And you'll see I'll be going through my purpose plan outcome slide here. This is

literally the only slide that I show in discovery. I don't show any other

discovery. I don't show any other slides.

And And then you'll see halfway through this they'll start to skim down and you'll just see them smile because they stumble upon this. And that's when I'm like,

upon this. And that's when I'm like, "Okay, like I've kind of demonstrated like a little bit of credibility and that I'm not like that random sales rep who just like shows up and throws up on

a call." A lot of I think what you what

a call." A lot of I think what you what you need to realize is that the bar for sales people is extremely low. And most

prospects when they jump on a sales calls, they are used to sales people by setting any agenda, asking them 30 canned discovery questions, and then just like feature dumping on them. And

so, I think a lot of times in the first 90 seconds of call, if you can demonstrate something that shows that you understand their space, or you did your research, or you listened to the one of their podcasts before, and like

subtly slide it in in the first 90 seconds, you will see the entire temperature in the room change for the entire rest of the discovery call.

Well, speaking of canned questions, Armand, why don't we talk about now how to navigate the discovery part of the discovery call.

So, most sellers are obsessed with discovery questions, and they're always on the hunt for the perfect discovery question to ask. The reality is is the worst thing that you could do is memorize canned questions, because it

does it hurts you in two ways. Way

number one is it kind of makes you seem like a salesy sales robot. Two,

memorizing questions that don't come from you totally kills your style. And

so, instead of memorizing questions, you should actually be memorizing the relationship between the common situations or scenarios of how prospects are typically doing things today,

how those different ways they might be doing things creates problems that you can solve, and then why solving those problems would actually matter to a business so

that you can get budget. And so, for you, you have to understand the relationship between those situations, the problems those situations create, and why it would matter to solve those

problems. If you have memorized and understand that, asking questions is the easy part. And so, we're going to teach

easy part. And so, we're going to teach you how to build that map of situation to problem to impact using what's called a discovery tree.

All right. So, now we're going to teach you how to build your discovery process here. How do you actually uncover

here. How do you actually uncover massive problems worth solving that you can actually solve? We are intentionally not starting by giving you a list of discovery questions. And the reason for

discovery questions. And the reason for that is is great discovery is not about memorizing questions. Great discovery is

memorizing questions. Great discovery is about mastering and memorizing the relationship between the different situations of how your prospect might be doing things today, how those situations

create problems that you can solve, and then why solving those problems would actually matter to a business so that you can get budget for your champion to solve those problems. So, let's talk about what that looks like for Pave,

Armand.

Yeah. And so, to next point, if you know what problem you are trying to uncover, it becomes pretty easy what discovery question you should ask from there.

And so, one of the most common mistakes I'll see in reps is for example, Pave was a software that helped you plan your compensation reviews more quickly. So, when people wanted to get promoted, normally people would be doing that in spreadsheets and

it takes a ton of time and it's very error-prone. Pave helps you do that much

error-prone. Pave helps you do that much more seamlessly, right?

A lot of times reps would hear, "Oh, I'm planning compensation in spreadsheets."

And they're like, "It's time to buy Pave." But the problem is, who cares if

Pave." But the problem is, who cares if you're planning compensation in spreadsheets if it's working perfectly fine? That's not a problem, that's just

fine? That's not a problem, that's just a situation you're in.

So, you have to take it one step deeper, which is the operational problem, which is what is the problem that is created by your current way of doing things?

Well, typically when people are planning compensation in spreadsheets, usually it means it takes them a ton of time. So,

just spending hours and hours and hours in spreadsheets, or because you have like a thousand different tabs for like all the managers who are planning their promotions, it's really hard to oversee

managers' like compensation IQ and all of their decisions. So, both of those are more like operational problems. And the thing is, this is where most people stop because these are the problems that

are like at the line or like champion level problems. So, you might have like a manager of people operations or like a director of people operations who's living in these spreadsheets and they personally feel all of these problems.

But, then when they go to the CFO, the CFO's well like, I know you're spending all this time in spreadsheets, but that's your job. And so, now you need to turn the operational problem into something that your CFO cares about or

into something that the chief HR officer cares about. So, chief HR officer is

cares about. So, chief HR officer is like, yeah, I know I know my team spends a lot of time in spreadsheets, but they're really freaking out if they're spending so much time in spreadsheets that they're making compensation

mistakes. And compensation mistakes

mistakes. And compensation mistakes usually lead to employee attrition or getting written up in Business Insider.

And those are like executive and board-level problems. And so, the way that you build this out for your team is you go and you you review calls and you ask people why they took the call.

And usually, if you listen to the opening monologue, you will get a lot of operational problems. And then you just ask yourself, what happens bad because of those operational

problems? And that usually will get you

problems? And that usually will get you the business impact.

And then if you want to understand the situation that they're in, you just ask, what are the circumstances under which they have these operational problems?

So, if they're like, I'm spending so much time in spreadsheets, well, that means you're running compensation reviews out of spreadsheets. And so,

it's pretty simple. You start with the problem in the long monologue in your customer calls. You ask, what happens

customer calls. You ask, what happens bad because of those things? And that

gets you to the business impact. And

then you ask, what circumstances need to exist for that problem to usually be true? And that is your situation.

true? And that is your situation.

Yes. So, now we're going to teach you how to build this for yourself. I will

give you some questions that you can ask to easily navigate the trees. So, let's

start at the situational level. The best

way to figure out how your prospect is doing things today is to ask them, why did you take the call? So, Armand,

you're my prospect, you hop on the call with me. All I'm going to ask you is,

with me. All I'm going to ask you is, Armand, you requested a demo on your site. What prompted you to want to talk

site. What prompted you to want to talk with us?

Or if I'm outbound, I'm going to say, "Look, Armand, I know I called you last week. I can't imagine you take calls

week. I can't imagine you take calls with every single person that cold calls you. What prompted you to want to

you. What prompted you to want to actually meet with me?" They're

typically going to answer in one of two ways. They're either going to tell you

ways. They're either going to tell you their situation, "Well, look, we're planning comp in spreadsheets today and we're looking for a better way to do it."

it." But honestly, a lot of prospects are going to start by dropping you here, where they're like, "Look, we're planning comp in spreadsheets and it's taking way way too much time. We're

looking for a better way to do it." So,

you can figure out the situation just by asking why did you take the call. Now,

some prospects aren't immediately going to take you down to the problem level.

So, sometimes a prospect will actually not give you something in the tree, they'll give you what I call a lead source, which is, "Well, you reached out to me." Or "I've heard of Pave's name a

to me." Or "I've heard of Pave's name a lot and like so I just thought I would take a look."

Well, then you're just going to ask why again, which is, "Look, my guess is every name you hear about, you probably don't take one of those calls or you don't take every single cold call that comes your way. I'm curious, like, what made you take this one? I'm sure there

was something that piqued your eye." And

you will usually get some semblance of a problem. But sometimes you still might

problem. But sometimes you still might not. Some Some people might just say,

not. Some Some people might just say, "Well, our compensation reviews seem a little bit unscalable and like it seems like we want a a better way to plan comp, right?" That's more of just like

comp, right?" That's more of just like something they want. That's not really a problem. And so, what you can do from

problem. And so, what you can do from there is you can do what we call turning wants into whys or inverting the feature benefit. So, if they want a more

benefit. So, if they want a more streamlined way to run compensation reviews, I'm just going to say, "Well, typically when someone wants a better way to run compensation reviews, it's because it's either taking too much time

in spreadsheets, like it's just super clunky, or it's like you're like, 'Oh my god, like I just have no idea what's going on with all these manager decisions.' And so, like like there's a

decisions.' And so, like like there's a better way to like see all of the stuff and make sure I'm actually on top of all these decisions. I'm curious, which one

these decisions. I'm curious, which one is it for you?" And so, that's a combination of inverting the feature benefit and using what we call a typically question, which is giving

people options or problem buckets that they can fall into. This is what also allows you to make sure that discovery goes in the direction of the problems you can solve.

Yes.

A lot of times people think I'm just talking about any compensation related problem. You know, we've got these new

problem. You know, we've got these new Belgian hires and we want to make sure that we have data for them and I think there might be some inequities between Belgium and like our US employees and

and like maybe 1/8 of those problems are problems that we can solve. Some of them are just like problems from being a buffoon. And you want to make sure that

buffoon. And you want to make sure that you isolate the call and you steer it towards the problems that you can solve and that's what the trees are used for.

This is why I think one of the worst pieces of discovery advice is just be curious and ask lots of questions because Armand, if you tell me you've got an office in Belgium, I'm really

curious about that. What a cool part of the country, how exciting, tell me about that. Oh, you're growing, you're

that. Oh, you're growing, you're expanding. I can't solve any of those

expanding. I can't solve any of those problems. Being curious and asking lots of questions is discovery 101 advice for someone who's never been in sales before. But if you are actually trying

before. But if you are actually trying to be a sophisticated B2B seller, you should not be just following your curiosity unless you are following it in the direction of problems that you can

actually solve, which is why you have to know the situations and problems that you can solve. Otherwise, you were just hunting and pecking and looking for and you cannot solve everything.

So, at this point, we've gotten the situation of how they're doing things today. We used our why do you take the

today. We used our why do you take the call, our why again, our invert the feature benefit, and our typically or multiple choice questions to get down to the operational problem layer. To your

point earlier Armand, no CFO is going to greenlight a $100,000 spend because someone is spending too much time in spreadsheets. That's what they're paid

spreadsheets. That's what they're paid to do. So, what we have to do is we have

to do. So, what we have to do is we have to find a way to build that problem into something bigger that actually impacts the business. My two favorite questions,

the business. My two favorite questions, question number one, the magic moment question. So, someone's telling you,

question. So, someone's telling you, "Yeah, we spend way too much time in spreadsheets. We've got three people on

spreadsheets. We've got three people on the team. We want a better way to do

the team. We want a better way to do it." I need to pull this down to like a

it." I need to pull this down to like a business risk or like bigger issue.

The best way to do that is to get your prospect to tell you a story about the problem. And the best way to get them to

problem. And the best way to get them to tell you a story is to say something like, "Well, gosh, Armand, you know, I I I can't believe I I can't imagine you woke up this morning and you were like, 'We've got to find a way to spend less

time in comp and spreadsheets.' I guess when was the moment that you realized this was like a a problem you actually needed to tackle?" And what you will almost always get in return is a story

about how, yeah, they had six different spreadsheets and there was an error and there was a mistake and then there was almost a lawsuit and there was a major major issue.

So, your magic moment question, when was the moment you realized you needed to solve this or when was the moment you realized this was a problem, will often get them to give you an in-depth story

with so much more detail that will help you sell and solve than if you're just like, "So, is that creating risk in your business Armand?"

business Armand?" Correct. And so, now we go from

Correct. And so, now we go from operational problem to business impact.

Usually, again, stories are the bridge from operational problem in the business impact. And then from there,

impact. And then from there, once you get a story about an employee who had a comp mistake or something like that, that's still not enough to say I have full business impact. And so, I

like to add a couple questions that solidify business impact. In other

words, am I sure that this is a trend that is worth solving? Is this something worth prioritizing? So, I'll usually ask

worth prioritizing? So, I'll usually ask a push-pull question. So, a lot of times people will ask what are called impact questions, which is, "What would you do if you could prevent all of these

compensation mistakes from happening?"

Or they're very leading in that like how much pipeline do you think you're losing because of all of these deals that are being lost? And it just like makes

being lost? And it just like makes people feel like you're laying a sales trap for them. Instead, I almost like to push them away from the business impact to see if they push back into it. So I

might say, Look Look, Nick. I want to make sure that like we're focused on solving the right problem cuz you could probably spend a million hours solving any compensation problem. I'm curious, is

compensation problem. I'm curious, is this the kind of thing that you see as like top priority because like left and right this stuff is coming off or do you feel like this is kind of like a one-off

and it's like it's it's volume in that it's loud but it's not volume in terms of a lot happening. Like how how important is this to your team?

And usually they'll be like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, like like this is pretty important." Or they might say,

important." Or they might say, "Yeah, you know, that this kind of isn't that important." And I would rather find

that important." And I would rather find that out now on a discovery call because that means I either need to go to a different part of the tree. So I might go to the managers can't oversee comp decisions. Or I might need to go to

decisions. Or I might need to go to another product or another one of my trees over here, which is another set of problems that I solve. So the way that you actually go about building this out for your team

is you actually see two trees here, which are the two main trees we had at Pave because there were two main products. So two products, two discovery

products. So two products, two discovery trees.

We also had a series of backup or situational trees, which were for certain competitors. So for example,

certain competitors. So for example, when companies got to 1,000 employees, they were usually using Workday to plan their compensation. So we had a Workday

their compensation. So we had a Workday take down tree. And so you basically have many disco playbooks for the most common situations that you have. That's

step one is like build playbooks for each of the most common situations or products or personas that you go up against.

Yes.

Step number two is the way you actually burn this into either your brain as a rep or into your team's brain is we literally printed these out and we put them on desks and on our walls and you

would see reps in a discovery call looking down. And this is the key is

looking down. And this is the key is it's not a script. It's they're just understanding base The prospect might drop me anywhere in these discovery trees. And so, if a rep gets dropped

trees. And so, if a rep gets dropped here, when they get asked, "Why did you take the call?" the rep now knows I need to bring that down to common equities.

And so, you'd see people like on these calls live just being like, "Okay, I'm going to use this as a map." That's

number two. And then 2B, as part of that, is once per week, we would do a discovery tape review where we would watch a call together. And then we would

have the trees on one side of the board.

And what would usually happen is you would see that uh a rep would almost always stop at the operational problem.

So, they would always stop right here when someone said like, "Ah, these spreadsheets take me so much time." And

just by calling that out and then asking the team, "Hey, now that we're not in the middle of the pressure of the call, what is a question that we could have asked to uncover business impact?" And

letting people practice without the pressure of the customer being right there in front of them, you'd see people be like, "Oh, like I do stop here all the time." We called it like the the red

the time." We called it like the the red sea of crappy discovery where like no one would be willing to cross this line right here. And then all of a sudden

right here. And then all of a sudden people started like be bold and go past that line. And that is where

that line. And that is where the six- and seven-figure problems are found here. The four- and five-figure

found here. The four- and five-figure problems are found here.

I'll give one note on this, Armand, which is I think a lot of sellers are afraid to have this printed out and be referencing it on the call. Like you

talked about, you see your reps looking down. If you think about the last time

down. If you think about the last time you went to the doctor, that person probably had like an iPad or a chart that they were referencing. Like

I think sometimes we treat selling like a closed book test as opposed to an open book test. It is okay for you to bring

book test. It is okay for you to bring your tree to a call and pause and reference it just like a doctor would on a call. And good news for you is we're

a call. And good news for you is we're actually going to put something in the description of this episode where you can build your own tree. We actually

have like some maps built out for you.

Let's talk about how to build this yourself. Um maybe Armand, we can

yourself. Um maybe Armand, we can actually build one live. How do you feel about that?

Yeah, let's do that. And folks, for reference, what we our whole mantra here is we try to give you as much as you can to do things for free on your own. Um

but part of the reason we do this as well is because this is our enablement program where we literally help teams build out all of these discovery playbooks step-by-step for your sales motion so you can sell the same way that

we do at 30 MPC and then we help your managers run those tape reviews, too.

So, if you're interested in look at learning more about that, go to 30mpc.com/training

30mpc.com/training or check it out down below. But uh until then, let's actually just show you how to do it for free. All right? All right,

folks. So, let's actually go about building one of these. Um we're going to build two different examples. Uh Nick is going to go through one for hit for when he sold legal billing software. I'm

because we already did Pave, uh I'm currently running the 30 MPC enablement program sales team, so I'm going to do that. This is not a hidden plug, um but

that. This is not a hidden plug, um but it's it's selling to sales leaders, which I think everyone will understand, so it becomes really clear. So, we have two or three different discovery trees when it comes to our 30 MPC enablement

program.

Uh they either focus on teams have a specific skill that they want to improve, whether it's like cold calling, multi-threading, or discovery, or there's like a general like we're trying

to level up our team, but we're really lean and it's more of like a resourcing issue of like we don't have the expertise or the resources in staff to like train our team to ramp reps or onboard them fast enough, right? For the

sake of today, I'm going to do the skill tree. We usually go into both because

tree. We usually go into both because the combination of the both is like here's a skill you want to solve, here's why it's hard to solve for that. All

right? So, let's assume that uh I'm working with a team that says uh multi-threading is a focus.

Okay? Again, that's not really a problem, that's just a situation. It's

like we call it skill selection. So,

skill selection is multi-threading.

From there, I try to think about like what are the things that sales managers complain about or enablement leaders complain about when it comes to multi-threading?

They usually aren't complaining about lost deals. That's the impact. They're

lost deals. That's the impact. They're

usually complaining about the rep either like didn't ask at all, or

asked wrong person, which is a champion issue. In other words, like you got to

issue. In other words, like you got to the wrong like you hitched your your horse to the wrong wagon around here or hitch your wagon to the wrong horse, whatever it's called, right? So, it's

like one of those two things. And so,

this is where our question would come in of like, "Hey, typically when people are struggling with multi-threading, it's because their reps either aren't asking at all or that sometimes they're like asking the wrong champion entirely and it's like they're actually talking to a coach, not a champion. I'm curious which

one is it for you?" Cool.

And then from there, whichever one it is, I'm probably going to ask a couple of layering questions to understand like, "What have you taught reps so far?

Why is this happening?" But then from there, I'm going to try to turn this into impact. And usually when you ask

into impact. And usually when you ask someone like, "When was the moment you realized you had a multi-threading problem?" Was it like, "Did a deal get

problem?" Was it like, "Did a deal get blown up? Was it coming in the forecast?

blown up? Was it coming in the forecast?

Was it something else?" And nine times out of 10, people will say, "Deal or forecast blown up."

blown up." And it kind of doesn't matter because both of those lead to the exact same impact. So, we've got

impact. So, we've got don't leave time and the way that we solve that is teaching people leave time or ask wrong person, which is the way we solve that is teaching people how to test the right champions and make sure

that you're not giving like a champion permission to give you access to the whole org when they are not actually a champion yet. Cool. So, that's the

champion yet. Cool. So, that's the 30-60-90 enablement program tree for specifically for the multi-threading skill.

Let's do one for legal billing, Armand.

Oh, everyone loves lawyers.

Everyone would understand. I think even more people are going to understand legal billing. So, context, I used to

legal billing. So, context, I used to sell specialized billing software to large law firms. And one of the big issues they had was these large law firms would send their bills to their

insurance carrier clients. So, I worked with a lot of insurance defense law firms. They represented companies like Nationwide, Chubb, etc. And these insurance companies, they are devious

and they will do anything not to pay their bill on time or not pay it at all.

And so, a lot of times law firms would deal with what was called like deductions and appeals on their specialized e-bills they would send law firms. So, one of the first things I would try to understand from a

situational level, how is the customer doing things today? When I would meet with an insurance defense law firm, which was like, "Are you doing any e-billing?" Like I literally would ask

e-billing?" Like I literally would ask them that question. If they said yes, I knew I was in this tree. So, that would be doing e-billing. I know, e-billing, it was amazing. It was like a very

forward thing in the technological thing in the the legal space. So, it was, "Are you doing any e-billing?" which is just a specialized type of billing that law firms would do.

If they said yes, I now knew there were two types of problems that would happen. Problem one

would be that these law firms or problem one would be that these insurance companies, they would do deductions on the bills.

Meaning, they would say, "Oh, you wrote on your bill that you did legal research. We don't pay for research cuz

research. We don't pay for research cuz you should know it all anyway." Or, "Oh, I see you had a legal assistant do some work on our case. We only pay for work that partners would do." So, problem one

would be they would say, "You billed us a million dollars, we're actually only going to pay 800,000 of those dollars."

Okay? So, we would hear about deductions. Problem two would be maybe

deductions. Problem two would be maybe they would pay the whole bill, but they would cause a stink and they would do what is called bill appeals. So, they

might say, "Hey, you billed us for a legal assistant work, we need to understand more about what that person did, otherwise we're not going to pay or we're going to hold off." And so, bill appeals. And the problem that would

appeals. And the problem that would create for the law firm was now someone in the law firm's billing department would literally have to like write up a justification of why that bill should be

paid. Okay? So, these were the problems.

paid. Okay? So, these were the problems. Now, this is related to billing, which is literally directly try tied to revenue. And so, getting to the impact

revenue. And so, getting to the impact piece isn't that hard. If there are deductions, all it is going to be is it is lost revenue. And so, all I have to do here is

Armand, I have to use that push-pull question that you were talking about earlier because yes, deductions, not getting paid, most people would think you would want to solve it. But if they

were getting $10,000 of deductions a year and my software costs $50,000, probably wasn't going to be something they would invest in. So, I would need to get a directional sense of like, "Look, is it just a couple deductions

coming in a year, or is this like a bigger thing that is starting to impact the bottom line?"

So, that would be one way that I would go deeper. The other on appeals, this

go deeper. The other on appeals, this would be less of a lost revenue piece because a lot of these law firms would be able to win the appeal. Instead, it

would be a cash flow issue because now they'd sent a million-dollar bill that's supposed to be paid by the end of the month, but because they have to go back and forth in appeal, it might take 4 months to get it paid. And so, a lot of

law firms have a key metric they would look at called whip to cash. We would

often be able to justify the investment in our software by impacting that metric that a lot of law firm CFOs would care about. So, this is simple. Like, this is

about. So, this is simple. Like, this is not meant to be complex, but you do the work up front to make running your discovery calls simple. This was very easy for me to run on every law firm e-billing call that I would have.

So, there's one final nuance talk about when it comes to navigating these trees, and it's a concept that we call reverse tree climbing.

[snorts] And that's where a lot of times we'll ask people, "Why'd you take the call?"

And this is when you're doing champion level discovery, or you'll come in with a point of view, and they'll drop you into an operational problem. There are a lot of times when you'll be meeting with an executive, and honestly, more and

more recently, the way that I've been starting my calls is here's what I think is important to you in terms of POV. I

would love to just understand like what is what are like all of the priorities that you're focused on when it comes to the development of your reps in your sales organization and then I can tell you which of those we ladder into, right?

Yes.

That's when leaders will oftentimes drop you up here, all the way at the bottom of the tree, right?

And this is when I need to start to work my way backwards. So if we have two or three trees, for example, our deals are blowing up or forecast is blowing up, that leads to two different discovery

trees that we have. So we either have our discovery discovery tree or we have our multi-threading discovery tree. So I'm going to start to work my

tree. So I'm going to start to work my way backwards to the situation and the operational problem. And so I actually

operational problem. And so I actually like to go, "Okay, typically when a leader is focused on deals blowing up or the forecast, it's either like a discovery problem where it's like at the beginning of the call like there wasn't

even a real problem we're solving or it's a multi-threading problem and it's like, you know, the reps aren't getting the power and like that's creating risk in those deals. Sometimes it's like a vendor review management problem or something like that, but I'm curious

like which which is top of mind for you in terms of like how you think you want to support that priority, right? And so

the beauty is I already know they're sold on that priority and now I'm trying to figure out what are the ways they are thinking about addressing that, which is the situation, and then I work my way back to the operational problem, which

is, "Okay, so if multi-threading is the problem, now what do you usually see happening with reps? Is it this or this, right?" And so that's how you work your

right?" And so that's how you work your way backwards from impact to situation to operational problem. So you kind of work this this tree in a circle essentially.

Well, and part of it is knowing that you can actually solve that problem. So what

would happen for me is I would oftentimes meet with a law firm CFO or a month and they'd be like, "Yeah, we want to speed whip to cash. We want to get better cash flow." And there's a million things that impact cash flow, whip to

cash. It might be that they have

cash. It might be that they have appeals. It might be that their billing

appeals. It might be that their billing department is understaffed and they're not able to get their bills out the door on time. We're not a staffing company. I

on time. We're not a staffing company. I

can't solve that one. But it also might be it takes their partners too long to approve bills because the partner refuses to use a computer and only wants a paper bill. Well, we often could find

ways to solve use cases around that. And

so I would know to ask actually reverse typically questions and say, "Look, typically when someone's focused on that, there's two or three ways that we can help solve that. Do any of those problems exist for you?" Cuz if they do,

we can solve them. If it's a staffing issue, we can't and we shouldn't be talking. So reverse tree climbing is

talking. So reverse tree climbing is another method you're going to use frequently when you're meeting with execs. All right, so let's just jump

execs. All right, so let's just jump back around onto the overall call structure. What we've covered so far is

structure. What we've covered so far is we talked about controlling the upfront piece of the call by anchoring to the purpose of the meeting.

Can we actually solve your problem?

Let's figure it out. The plan for how you're going to run that call so they're not sitting there expecting a demo when you're asking a bunch of questions trying to navigate your trees. And then

the outcome to anchor to where are we going to go from here so that they are not guessing. We then taught you how to

not guessing. We then taught you how to navigate from situation to problem to impact. This is the next piece of the

impact. This is the next piece of the call. So, from here, this is where most

call. So, from here, this is where most sellers totally botch things is they set their agenda, they ask a bunch of discovery questions, and find a problem worth solving, and then they try to skip

to next steps. [music]

That is a mistake. There are two things you need to accomplish in a discovery call.

Thing one is you have to find a problem worth solving. Thing two is you need

worth solving. Thing two is you need them Thing two is you need to make them believe that you can solve that problem.

And so many sellers are afraid of showing any sort of demo or giving any sort of pitch because it's supposed to be a discovery call. You are losing credibility and making your buyer feel like this person is a waste of my time.

And so the way that we can solve this, you don't have enough time on a disco call to go into a deep dive demo. And so

instead what you're going to give is what we call your harbor tour or Pimp My Ride demo that gives them a taste so that they're excited to set next steps with you.

So, if you don't know, it's it's become uh clear to me that um this is a millennial TV show, which apparently is is not cool anymore. But, there was this old show called Pimp My Ride with

[laughter] this old phenomenal BT rapper named Xzibit. And

the whole concept of it is Xzibit would spend the first half of the episode meeting someone who had a really crappy car.

Yeah.

And understanding all of the things that they like about their life, all the things that make them passionate.

They're like, "Maybe I love to do karaoke. Maybe I love to sit in the hot

karaoke. Maybe I love to sit in the hot tub. Maybe I like to, you know, barbecue

tub. Maybe I like to, you know, barbecue with my friends." And then they would pimp my ride. So, they would fix the car and do like ridiculous things to it.

Like, they would put a jacuzzi in the car, which makes no sense. Or they would put a karaoke machine like right next to the glove compartment so you can sing while you drive as if that's also a safe

thing. And so then, what Xzibit would do

thing. And so then, what Xzibit would do is Xzibit would do the Pimp My Ride demo at the end, where he would always say, "Yo, dog, you mentioned you like to sing. And so, I put a karaoke machine in

sing. And so, I put a karaoke machine in your glove box. You mentioned you like to be in the hot tub." And then there's a picture of Let me see if I can pull it

up for a second. Uh Xzibit

Uh uh Xzibit hot tub Pimp My Ride And he would be like [laughter] Oh my god.

And he makes this guy jump into the hot tub with him on Pimp My Ride. And so,

literally, you've got this guy jumping in the But, the whole premise of it is Xzibit was running the best software demo of all time because these were the things that he learned in discovery. And

then he showed them exactly how the product met the problem that they said in discovery. And that's what you need

in discovery. And that's what you need to do in your demo is a lot of times people will just come in with the same regurgitated pitch they give everyone else.

And when you do the Pimp My Ride demo, you say, "This is the problem you had you have. This is how we solve it." It

you have. This is how we solve it." It

forces you to be very efficient in your demo and only show the exact things that they said you can solve for. You can go into the technical weeds way later in

your demo when you're going deep and you're doing tech validation. But for

the sake of a 5-minute Harbortouch demo, the three things that you need to do are number one, we will communicate what we call a three-pillar pitch, which is, "Hey, you mentioned your teams are

struggling with multi-threading.

Your apps are going to get really good at multi-threading through our courses."

If they only did that, they'd be good.

The second problem you mentioned is it's a really big pain to build all these playbooks yourself.

Guess what? In dumb human language, we're going to help you build your multi-threading playbooks.

Step number three, you mentioned that your managers don't reinforce this stuff. It's really hard to reinforce

stuff. It's really hard to reinforce this stuff. We're going to give you all

this stuff. We're going to give you all the scorecards you need to make sure that this stuff actually works. I'm

going to show you what that looks like on the next call. How does that resonate? And notice I'm using the

resonate? And notice I'm using the things that they gave me to basically tell them this is exactly where my product plays in. It's in their language, not in my product's language.

So, after you do this like 45- to 60-second three-pillar pitch, you get a reaction from them what we'll talk about afterwards, and then you may do a 3-4 minute Harbortouch pitch where you pick the one or two biggest problems and you

just kind of show them it's there in your product and then you use that to pull them into the next call where it's like, "We'll review that more on the next one." Cool?

next one." Cool?

Yes. Yeah.

So, that brings us to the final piece of the call going back to this call structure, which is what we call next steps or the 5-minute drill, which are the things the final questions that you ask in the last 5 minutes of a call. So,

when you're setting next steps, probably the biggest mistake that I see sellers make is they set next steps with tire kickers who are never actually

going to buy anything. And so, we have three questions that you typically ask in what we call the 5-minute drill that accomplish a couple things. Number one,

they validate that you are even in a deal that is worth having a next step with. And then two, they make sure that

with. And then two, they make sure that you take the right next step and start to multi-thread and bring in other people in the deal. So, question number one is do you want to buy?

And you don't literally ask do you want to buy, but you are trying to figure out based on everything that I shared with you, is this a problem you could realistically like see yourself solving,

or is it something that like is kind of a nice to have and would be a burden of your time to spend more time looking at?

Could you be completely honest? Like you

won't hurt my feelings. And keep in mind, we set the expectation at the beginning of PPO over here that it would be okay if it was no, right? So, at this point we'll have an honest conversation on whether or not it's priority. If they

say no, it's not a priority, I'm not going to set a next step. Okay? That's

part one.

Part number two is this especially happened at Pave is Pave was a seasonal business. So, people would buy

business. So, people would buy compensation software typically three months before their first compensation review.

And so, if they weren't in that window, we might be like having someone who's complaining about compensation reviews, but doesn't have one for like nine months. And so, I'm going to say, "Hey,

months. And so, I'm going to say, "Hey, like based on what I know about you, I think your next merit cycle's here. I

think you mentioned that your your sales kickoff is here. You you want to get your reps um onboarded on negotiation before Q3. I'm

curious, like when's the latest you'd want to have something like this in place? Would it be like a Q3 kind of

place? Would it be like a Q3 kind of thing?" So, I'm going to suggest a

thing?" So, I'm going to suggest a timeline and validate it based on what I learned in discovery. So, that makes sure that you're working on a deal that is worth closing today.

And then based on that timeline, now I can ask the final question, which is how do you buy? So, it's do you want to buy, when do you want to buy, and then how do you buy? And notice, there's actually

you buy? And notice, there's actually not a question mark at the end of the one because how is you should be prescribing how you purchase. And the reason for that is, even though they know their organization,

you have sold your product way more times than they have bought your product, and you know every way a deal dies. And so this is where you start to

dies. And so this is where you start to prescribe how or the most efficient way to get the deal done.

And so this is where I would usually say something like, "Hey, typically we would have someone like uh you're the head of enablement, we would usually get you on board, and then we would get one of your most senior ranking sales leaders on

board, like your director of mid-market sales, Alex over there on board, and then we would go up to the VP of sales after both you feel really good about this thing. So, how does the next call

this thing. So, how does the next call with you and Alex over there to go through like a full program deep dive sound? Does that sound good?" Cool.

sound? Does that sound good?" Cool.

Awesome. Now they're going to help me validate whether or not they're on board with that buying process. Conversely,

some people just ask like, "Who do you think will feel left out?" And nine times out of 10, guess what they're doing? They're kicking you below the

doing? They're kicking you below the line because it's scary to bring in peers or people above the line. So, you

always want to coach them.

As you are building out your own discovery playbook, this is honestly one of the biggest mistakes that I see reps and teams make is they do not know what they want to ask for

before they get into the call. And so

what you can see over here is we've actually mapped this out for our sales motion where there are different org structures based on how big of a company we're talking to. So, there are companies that are before they have sales enablement, there are companies

that are like a VP of sales plus a few managers, then you have like directors as second line leaders, and then you have like conglomerates where it's like, "Okay, we're trying to sell to LinkedIn and they've got like seven VPs or something like that." It's multiple

sales orgs in one.

Let's say I'm selling to a second line leadership org.

I asked my reps to put together what we call the tail of the tape, which is who are we meeting with?

Who is at, across, below, and above the line? So, let's say for example, I'm

line? So, let's say for example, I'm meeting with a director of mid-market sales.

I know that I need to get both sides of the sales organization on board. So, I

know my rep should be planning at the end of the call to go across when they're in the 5-minute drill to the enablement director. And then they know

enablement director. And then they know after that, once I get these two on board, now I have one or two champions, depending on which of these two people is like more of the change maker in the organization. And then from there, I'm

organization. And then from there, I'm going to take both of these people and go up. Okay? So, that's scenario number

go up. Okay? So, that's scenario number one. Scenario number two might mean,

one. Scenario number two might mean, let's say we get stuck with one of these other personas like a a manager, for instance. Well, if I get stuck with a

instance. Well, if I get stuck with a manager, well, now what I need to do is I can't go from manager up to CRO or manager up to enablement, I need to go from manager up and get to actual like

an a real champion because this person's like a coach or a cheerleader. Like

they're not going to be a real champion who can actually drive any sort of purchase through. And then I need to go

purchase through. And then I need to go across to the enablement director. All

right? So, always like have org maps built for your team and try to document what we call the golden path, which is what are the people that are typically involved in your sales motion, and then

where are the ideal entry points in the organization, and then in what order do I need to flip each of those dominoes to get the deal done. For us, it's director, director, and then we go up to the top or we work our way from the

bottom up, across, and up to the top.

To recap what Armand is saying, in order to properly build your discovery playbook, you need to document the different

company archetypes of the types of companies you can sell to. This is what we use for 30-60-90. When I sold to law firms, we would have archetypes for the

different types of legal practices that they had because the way we would navigate an IP firm might actually be different than how you would navigate a massive 800 attorney insurance [snorts]

firm. So, you define your archetypes,

firm. So, you define your archetypes, and then what you do is you define your path for how you will navigate the golden path to get deals done at those

orgs. That informs, if you go back to

orgs. That informs, if you go back to the next steps part, Armand, what you will suggest for the how part of your 5-minute drill. If you suggest a how

5-minute drill. If you suggest a how that is The how that you suggest for a 1,000-person company is probably going to be different than the how you would suggest for a 100-person company, which is why you need to define those

archetypes, because that will inform how you set your next steps.

Correct. And then from there, you always want to book the meeting on the spot.

And like this is a tiny admin thing, but like reps will just shave like weeks off of their sales cycle by being like, "Oh, I know we're at time because I didn't leave the time for the 5-minute drill.

It was the 2-minute drill, and I'll send you some times afterwards." If that ever happens to you, throw the dart, which is, "Hey, I know you need to run this by your person internally. Can you look at their calendar right now? Great, let's

put a placeholder on your side before you socialize it." That's one kind of dart. The other way is they're running

dart. The other way is they're running out, I'm going to be like, "Yo, I'm going to throw something, a placeholder for Thursday, just so there's there's something on the calendar.

Would you mind accepting if that time works, or if not, I'll send some backup times?" And it is far more easy to

times?" And it is far more easy to accept a calendar invite that is already on your calendar or move it, as opposed to completely start new and schedule something completely fresh. So, always

leave meeting on the books if it is a deal that's actually worth pursuing. So,

folks, we talked about the four parts of the discovery call framework. To recap,

we have the purpose plan outcome PPO agenda. Then we have the problem trees

agenda. Then we have the problem trees and the questions that we use to navigate the trees, and we gave you a couple examples of how you can give and take and tell stories along the way.

Then we have the harbor tour demo, which is the three-pillar pitch and the pimp my ride demo. And then the final piece is the 5-minute drill, the five And the last piece of the 5-minute drill, which are the three questions you

ask at the end of every single call to set your next steps.

Now, if you want to build this for yourself, your friends here at 30MPC have put together a care package for you, where we've put together a bunch of almost Mad Libs style filling in the

blanks for your discovery trees, for the best discovery questions to navigate those trees, for how to make the conversation feel like a conversation, not an interrogation. And so, in the description of this episode, we covered

a lot of different like assets, resources, material. We're going to put

resources, material. We're going to put all of those in a care package in the episode description. Grab it. It is

episode description. Grab it. It is

free. It is designed to help you out.

And folks, if you want help building this from the 30MPC team yourselves, it is really, really hard to run a sales organization and build all of this stuff out for all of your reps and be

confident that you're doing it the right way when you're like rolling a lot of this stuff out for the first time. And

we make it super easy for you all to learn exactly how to do discovery, get your reps win rates up, and then build all of these playbooks out with your team. So, it's like the easy button to

team. So, it's like the easy button to get your team selling like 30MPC yourself. So, go check it out at

yourself. So, go check it out at 30mpc.com/training

30mpc.com/training or down in the show notes down below.

Well, thanks for watching, and we'll see you on the next video.