Imagine sitting down with a doctor and being handed a prescription before you've explained what's wrong. You'd question whether the doctor had listened to you at all.
// The comparison that stopped me in my tracks
Yet salespeople do the equivalent every day. A prospect mentions a challenge, we recognise something our product can do, and we're presenting the solution before we've finished nodding. We heard the first symptom. We haven't understood the condition.
This is where good sales discovery earns its place. It's the work of understanding a customer's situation well enough to recommend something that genuinely helps.
A Stated Requirement Is a Starting Point, Not an Answer
A council might say it needs a new customer portal. An NHS organisation might ask about AI transcription. Both are useful clues. Neither tells us enough to recommend anything.
What's happening in the current journey? Who's doing extra work because of it? How often does the problem occur? What would improve if it were fixed? Who needs to agree that the improvement is worth paying for?
The answer might be a technology change. It might also involve a broken handoff between teams, poor data, a difficult process, or a service designed around the organisation rather than the person using it. If we move straight to a demo, we can show impressive features and still miss the problem that actually matters.
Discovery has to go beyond collecting a list of requirements. It should establish five things.
// What discovery actually needs to establish
The present reality
What happens today, from the perspective of the people who use and deliver the service?
The consequence
What does the problem cost in time, money, risk, capacity, or experience?
The desired outcome
What would the customer be able to do better, and how would they recognise success?
The reason to act now
What's made this a priority, and what happens if the decision is delayed?
The route to a decision
Who's involved, what constraints matter, and how will the options be judged?
These aren't five boxes to race through on a call. They're a way to make sure both sides understand what they're trying to solve.
The Best Question Is Often a Follow-Up
It's easy to confuse discovery with asking lots of questions. The quality of the conversation depends on what we do with the answers.
If a customer says "our staff spend too much time re-entering information," the useful response isn't to describe an integration. It's to understand where the information starts, where it needs to go, who has to re-enter it, and what happens when that work is late or inaccurate.
Sometimes the most valuable question is simply this.
A real example gives us the people, steps and consequences behind a general statement. It also gives the customer room to correct our assumptions.
The salesperson's job is to listen closely enough to summarise the problem back.
"Have I understood this correctly? Your team receives the information, enters it again in a second system, and that delay affects when someone can make a decision."
If the customer agrees, we're getting closer to a shared diagnosis. If they correct us, we've learned something more useful than a polite nod during a presentation.
A Demo Should Answer a Question
I like product demonstrations. Done well, they help people see what could change. But their value depends on the question they're answering.
Once we understand the problem, we can show a relevant workflow and connect it to an outcome: less duplicate entry, a clearer view of a case, a faster response for a resident, or more time for a clinician to spend on care. We can discuss where the product fits, what implementation would require, and which parts of the customer's challenge it would leave for them to address.
That honesty matters. A credible recommendation includes its limits. It should stand up when the buyer takes it to colleagues who weren't in the meeting, to finance, or to procurement.
Make Diagnosis Part of Sales Discipline
This approach should carry through the whole sales process. In a pipeline review, I want to know more than the deal value, stage and close date. I want to know what problem the customer has agreed they need to solve, why it matters, what outcome they're buying, and what the next decision is.
If we can't answer those questions, a confident forecast may be based on our enthusiasm rather than the customer's intent. The next action is probably another conversation, not another version of the proposal.
// Where this fits in the wider discipline
Your Pipeline Review Should Improve the Deal, Not Just Inspect It
"What have we learned?" beats "what's happening?" — the same shift this piece is making, applied to the whole review
The strongest salespeople are curious before they're persuasive. They ask follow-up questions, test what they've heard, and let the customer's evidence shape the recommendation. By the time they present a solution, the customer can see why that particular answer fits.
// The standard I want from a sales conversation
Understand the problem, agree on the outcome, then earn the right to recommend the way forward.
// Source
The doctor's-prescription comparison that opens this piece came from a recent episode of CamBro Conversations.