Only The Average Do Discovery Calls
Why Aren’t Your Prospects Doing Discovery With You?
95% of fractional executives base their sales process on starting with a discovery call or conversation. How do you know if your prospect has one or more issues that you can help them with if you don’t ask? Not asking first is equivalent to the dreaded connect and pitch that rules on LinkedIn. It’s like the car salesperson that starts selling the moment you make eye contact leading up to the climax of “what’s it going to take for you to drive this off the lot?”
Is the wisdom of the masses correct?
It depends.
It depends on your level of genius or as the lawyers like to call it your intellectual property.
Your capability to impact your client is driven by your intellectual property. The distribution of intellectual property among fractionals is known to follow a normal distribution or Bell curve. It looks like this:
The bottom 20% only have experience to offer. To a client, someone with experience is an extra pair of hands or additional bandwidth. The client knows what to do and how to do it, but needs more capacity to get it all done. The vast majority of employees are hired based on their experience. When you are contracting to provide your experience to a client, you need to know if the client needs your skill set and capabilities. There’s only one way to find out — you need to have a discovery conversation with your prospect. It is only through a discovery call that you will be in a position to say if you can help or not.
The next 60% have expertise. You can solve a set of problems that your prospect cannot solve on their own. The client has figured out what problem they need to solve. Your prospect is in the Solution Aware stage as they are actively searching for someone who can help them solve their problem. You need to know if your prospect has one or more problems you can solve for them. The only way you’re going to find out is to have a discovery conversation with them. By the end of your discovery call, you’ll be able to say here’s how I can help you or I’m sorry but I can’t help you on this (but if you ever need me for these problems, please give me a call).
If you’re part of the 80% of fractionals that are average to below, you’re going to have to do a discovery conversation as the first part of your sales process.
But it doesn’t work this way if you’re in the top 20%.
The hardest part of business (or life for that matter) is figuring out what the problem is. You’re experiencing symptoms, but you don’t know the root cause. You can’t solve a problem when you don’t know what’s causing the problem.
How can you do a discovery conversation when the client doesn’t know what the problem is? You’re asking questions of your prospective client that they can’t answer.
The next 15% of fractionals have insight into the pains and opportunities that their prospects are struggling to either get rid of or to achieve. Those with insight know before having their first conversation what their prospects are struggling with. They know what their prospects have tried or are thinking of trying and why these aren’t going to get them the outcomes they want. More importantly, those with insight know the reason their prospects are struggling and how to think differently about the situation to see the way forward. These fractionals can easily articulate the steps that need to be taken so that the prospect can get out of their Struggle City and move into Success City.
The top 5% of fractionals have wisdom to offer their clients. These fractionals see things that others cannot. They don’t solve problems, they redefine them to come up with game changing and transformational strategies and approaches. They connect the dots to create a magical way forward where others see randomness and noise.
The top 20% don’t do discovery conversations because they don’t need to discover. Prospects engage with the top 20% of fractionals to discover the truth as to why they are in pain or why an opportunity seems out of reach. In this discovery conversation, the prospect learns from the fractional the path forward allowing them to go from squalor and misery to prosperity and success.
If you have insight or wisdom, then stop doing discovery calls and start helping those in your target market discover what’s holding them back.
Every time you do a discovery call, you are telling your prospect you’re average. You’re no different than everyone else they are talking to. You need your prospect to do the heavy lifting of figuring out what the problem is and you’re available to do the easy part which is solving it.
Instead, use Maven’s 3-part buying process so you have a business that enjoys the prosperity of living in Success City if not beyond.
- Qualify first to ensure that the person you are talking to meets your criteria for who you want to work with and that they are in the 95% of those that are struggling to get rid of a problem or achieve an opportunity that is important to them.
- Establish empathy and authority that you understand them and their situation and you have insight if not wisdom that can get them on the path to success.
- Lay out how you would work with them using your genius and intellectual property to make them the hero of the story they want written for their business.