Death to Discovery?

I read a post on LinkedIn yesterday touting the future benefits of AI in the business development world. The author made a reference to a concept called “death to discovery”, and it made me think. Why would anyone want to kill the discovery? After some research into he phrase and the thinking behind it, I think I can see the author’s point. Discovery itself is not the problem. It’s the fact that so many inexperienced reps think that it is a one call process where they read through a list of generic questions, interrogate their prospect, and move on without any idea of the context of the answers. This doesn’t build trust, knowledge, or relationships, It needs to end.

How did we get to this? My theory is that too many companies believe a good process can replace experience or talent. That may be true when the buying process is transactional, but it fails when complexity and specific knowledge enter the picture. Most industries have their own lexicon where certain words can convey an entire concept. Inexperienced reps can miss the context and fail to get any real meaning from the answers. What’s worse is that there is no conversation, no back and forth exploring of how and why things are done the way they are. 

There are legitimate questions that must be asked. In the route optimization world everyone will  need to know the number of trucks, drivers, depots, and planners. Other questions about the planning process are also critical. When do you plan? What is being delivered? What does the driver do to make a delivery? Etc. But, if the person asking the questions doesn’t have the experience or knowledge to hold a conversation about the answers, then time is being wasted and important context will be missed. A classic example would be walking through a planning process without the experience to see activities that are determined by legacy systems. Your rep should have the knowledge to dig into these activities and determine with you if they will still be required with a new system.

There are multiple stakeholders involved in every engagement. It makes no sense to stop learning after speaking with one person. What may be a great fit for operations could be a total bomb for IT or Customer Service. Everyone’s point of view needs to be taken into account with empathy and purpose, including drivers and dispatchers in the routing world. Implementations fail due to items that were never discovered in the sales process. They fail when the implementation team lacks the proper understanding of the requirements. We fail when we don’t understand everything we can due to lack of experience.

Death to discovery? No. Death to the discovery check box? Yes.