The most seasoned sales experts often miss this critical step in the sales process: conducting a deep and thorough discovery before jumping ahead to seal the deal. It uncovers exponential revenue opportunities that lie beneath the surface, key selling factors that often don’t come up in qualifying, and pertinent project details that can make or break your profitability. It takes time & patience, and it can feel tedious, but its dividends pay back a hundredfold.
A Discovery Conversation That Uncovered New Revenue
I was in a client meeting recently with an owner/operator where there was a suggestion to sit down with his spouse. This called for an additional session and a week’s delay to put together the proposal. However, during our “extra” meeting, his life partner mentioned: “I wish the whole company had the same appetite he does for sales growth.” This statement uncovered an opportunity I didn’t see before: our client’s leadership team could greatly benefit from our business development training program. This led to additional business to mutually benefit both of our companies.
When Incomplete Discovery Becomes an Expensive Mistake
On the flipside, a few years ago, I met with an architectural products supplier who provided a fenestration accessory for large high-rises. His team had wrongly assumed that the developer was looking to match their accessory product to several hundred door frames, when in fact the product was to be matched to the brick mould. This called for a very expensive custom coating process, which the client had to take on due to their mistake. They lost money on what should have been a lucrative piece of business.
The RISCS™ Model for Better Client Discovery
To not miss opportunities or costly surprises, we use the RISCS™ model in our client discovery sessions. Here’s how it works:
- Requirement: What are the key requirements that need to be met in a project? This is where open probe (i.e., who, what, how, where, when, and why) questions are best utilized, casting a wide enough net to ensure you’re not missing any important details.
- Importance: How important is a particular requirement to the client? It’s unlikely that all requirements are equal. You can ask the client to rate the importance of a requirement on a scale of 1 to 10 or rank how important it is compared to the other requirements they’ve listed.
- Scope: What are the parameters of a requirement? For example, what percentage of a project’s budget/time/focus should a named requirement encompass? What falls inside and outside of scope?
- Consequence: What would happen if the requirement was met fully, partially, or not at all? By asking the client to verify the opportunity cost around a specific detail, you’ll verify the “must-have” versus “nice-to-have” requirements.
- Solution: What solutions does the client already have in mind around a requirement? This is where we invite dialogue and co-ideation, testing which potential solutions will fit the requirement the best from the client’s perspective.
The Discipline of Going Deeper
The RISCS™ model is simple, but not easy. It takes patience, discipline, and practice to do it well. You may have to sell the value of the discovery to clients who are extremely busy and impatient. But it’s never a waste of time to avoid blind spots and fully understand the “why” (i.e., the importance to the client) behind each need, want, and desire.
If you catch yourself wanting to skip ahead to “making the sale” before walking through a proper discovery, ask yourself this question: would you rather spend a little more time now, or pay a big expense on a missed detail later?
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