Selling in a Crisis

37Discover Better

Except for putting the right qualified opportunities into the pipeline in the first place, nothing else has a greater impact on your ability to close sales in a crisis than effective discovery. Period.

Discovery is the most important step in the sales process. It's where 80% or more of your time should be spent. During discovery, you must be patient, methodical, and empathetic. The objective is to leverage strategic and artful questions to:

• Challenge the status quo and shake stakeholders from their comfort zones.
• Help stakeholders become aware that there is a need to change.
• Eliminate or neutralize perceived alternatives to doing business with you, including doing nothing, which is the primary alternative for stakeholders when things hit the fan.
• Uncover the desired personal, emotional, and business outcomes of each stakeholder.
• Learn your prospect's language, stories, and challenges.
• Build trust through listening and demonstrating a sincere interest in learning about stakeholders.

To close more deals in a crisis, you must connect with stakeholders at the emotional level, earn trust, and demonstrate that the outcomes derived from buying from you are better than any other alternatives, including the status quo. You won't do any of this if you don't discover better.

Shallow – or nonexistent – discovery is the primary reason for being ghosted, facing stalled deals, and pushing against endless “we need to think about it” objections. It leads to presentations ...