The 10 pearls of the discovery process

Did you remember some discovery interviews you had with your prospect that turned into a nightmare ? You will be likely to have bad times with reluctant customer like it happened to Bob Reifstahl in this nightmare on the video Discovery street discovery process.
Fortunately it won't be always the case and the discovery is anyway the most important part of your pre sales job and it is a great opportunity in order to :

1 Understand the main customer's business goals and pain points and how the implementation of your software could help your customer to reach this goals or to reduce the pains

2 Ask your customer "Why your organisation win in business". You will know more about the organisation and the value of your customer and you will be able to use the demo to show how your software will support this success and this unique position.

3 Check it out whether there is a real compelling event for their software implementation: Do they really want to change ? Do they have no other choice to change their IT or can they afford to postpone the project ? What happens if nothing is done ?

4 Know why did they send you the RFP ? Why are they considering your software and your company as relevant for their business ?

5 Ask to your customer "Why your organisation win in business". You will know more about the organisation and the value of your customer and you will be able to use the demo to show how your software will support this success and this unique position.

6 Learn from each individual what he really expects of the software value by asking "If you could transport yourself forward in time to 3 months after the go-live and look back, what would be the most important changes you would want to see?”

7 Collect valuable informations about their business jargon, customers, vendors, data and documents that will be useful for the demo

8 Focus on the 3 or 5 mains business scenarios that are both critical and valuable for their industry and that you could illustrate during the demo without showing all the features.

9 Find out the Unique Business Value of your software : The reason why your software will be unique to the customer's eyes

10 Create allies for your demo ( by selling yourself as a professional guy but not selling yet your product) and spot your assumed "enemy".

and Listen listen listen listen your customer and then contribute by helping them...

Have a look to Bob having bad times discovering his enemy :
"BOB - Go back to the forecasting methods, for exemple do you use exponential smoothing method today ?
THE CUSTOMER - Yes, sometimes we do, sometimes we don't"
Does that sound familiar to you ? I hope not !