In my last newsletter, I wrote about how confirming demand is THE thing we’re doing on calls with prospects. And how if a prospect doesn’t have demand, you shouldn't sell to them.
Makes sense, right?
Well, there’s something in here we need to talk about – how terribly challenging it is for founders to put this advice into action.
Most founders I know do not follow this advice. Most founders do not do adequate discovery. At least not at first.
I’ve watched discovery call recordings from dozens of different startups. No matter the industry, no matter the founder, I’ll see at least a few of these trends:
- Asking questions that feel productive, but don’t reveal demand
- Not asking follow-up questions to uncover a deeper understanding of the situation
- Moving towards a demo too fast
- Defaulting to answer questions with answers about the product, instead of follow up questions about their experience
- Asking no questions because the buyer has taken over the call
It’s so hard, but it’s so important: we need to avoid giving into these sales call habits, and stay focused on the key goal – we need to confirm what they have demand for.
Why is this the number one goal? Because if they don’t have something that they’re really blocked on, they’re not going to buy.
Most founders don’t want to believe this is true, and I understand why.
They want to believe that if the prospect just sees the product, they'll understand the value. They’ll buy.
Unfortunately that’s not a thing.
The bar to buy something is so much higher than that, unfortunately.
A prospect might listen to your demo. Nod their head, smile with real support. They might tell you what you’re building is great. They might root you on. They might connect you to someone else in the organization.
But if they do not have a relevant high-priority item that they’re trying to get done, seeing your software or having a genuinely lovely conversation with you will change nothing. It does not change what is on their plate.
Demoing might help them understand what you do, but it doesn’t change their internal state. And it’s critical that we understand their internal state – their demand – because otherwise, we stay stuck selling to buyers and segments that has no demand.
This is obviously dangerous when you’re in the early stages of selling because if you never find a segment with demand, you’ll be a zombie startup until you run out of runway or willpower.
But when you do have revenue, and you’re trying to ramp it up, the importance of excellent discovery remains key as well.
Excellent discovery will tell you in the first fifteen minutes whether we can disqualify them as a buyer and save ourselves a whole lot of time and energy.
I think about the hours I spent preparing for demos and follow-up calls for prospects that I now know were never going to buy, and never did buy.
Back-of-envelope math, the time we wasted trying to pull and cajole and convince these poor-fit buyers easily added up to 20% of my team and my working hours.
Twenty percent of our precious runway and time! And it could have gone to much more effective use – like pivoting towards prospects/segments that had real demand. All we had to do was become better at discovery.
So make this your rule: step one of every first call is uncovering demand.
You can only uncover it through adequate discovery.
Then, once you’ve established what’s going on, whether there’s a hint of a demand, and what it’s from – then, and only then, consider yourself free to go forth and demo!
This is Extra Extra, a newsletter about the tactics and mindsets that drive early sales. I’m Caroline Fay, an exited social impact founder who’s spent my career launching and selling new products. I help non-traditional tech founders build sustainable, recurring revenue.
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Caroline Fay
