There’s a hard truth about B2B sales that too many leaders overlook: Deals are won or lost long before a proposal is sent. The fate of your pipeline is sealed in the discovery call.
Think about your sales team’s last quarter. How many deals stalled? How many went dark after a “great conversation”? How often did your team push to the finish line, only to be blindsided by an objection that should have surfaced weeks earlier?
If that sounds familiar, your problem isn’t closing; it’s discovery.
Most sales teams think they’re doing effective discovery. They ask a few questions, capture surface-level pain points, and quickly move to pitching their solution. But real discovery isn’t about gathering basic information—it’s about deeply understanding the buyer’s world, exposing gaps, and creating urgency. If your team isn’t doing this well, they’re not losing deals at the finish line. They’re losing them the moment the first discovery call ends.
The Cost of Weak Discovery
Research from Forrester shows that 60% of B2B buyers prefer sellers who challenge their assumptions and provide fresh insights. Yet, according to Gartner, only 14% of customers feel that salespeople deeply understand their needs. That gap between what buyers want and what sellers deliver is where deals disappear.
Here’s what weak discovery looks like in the real world. Sales reps:
- Accept vague answers. For example, “Our biggest challenge is efficiency.”
- Rush to demo mode. Instead of digging into the problem, they default to showcasing features.
- Fail to quantify pain. Without numbers, problems feel abstract, making urgency weak.
- Miss the real decision-maker. Talking to the wrong person is a fast track to a stalled deal.
- Don’t challenge the status quo. If your prospect sees no compelling reason to change, they won’t.
The result? Forecasts filled with “maybe” deals that never close.
The Signals That Your Team is Failing in Discovery
As a CEO, CRO, or sales leader, you need clear signals that your team’s discovery process is broken. Here’s what to watch for:
1. Your Team Has a High Volume of Stalled Deals
If deals sit in the pipeline for months with no movement, it’s often because the rep didn’t uncover enough urgency in discovery. If the pain isn’t big enough, your buyer won’t prioritize solving it.
Fix it: Require reps to quantify the cost of inaction. Every discovery call should surface real business impacts, such as lost revenue, increased costs, and operational inefficiencies.
2. You See a Pattern of “Happy Ears”
Reps love to hear what they want: “This sounds great,” or “We definitely need something like this.” But surface enthusiasm doesn’t equal commitment. If your reps leave calls thinking the deal is a sure thing but struggle to get follow-up meetings, discovery is weak.
Fix it: Train your team to listen for specific pain points, not just positive sentiment. The best salespeople push past vague excitement and ask, “Why is this a priority now?”
3. Your Close Rates Are Low Despite High Demo Volume
If your team is doing a ton of demos but closing few deals, it’s a sign they’re jumping to solutions too soon. A good discovery call should earn the right to a demo. If reps are giving demos before fully understanding the problem, they’re turning their product into a commodity.
Fix it: Implement a strict qualification process—no demo unless the rep can clearly articulate the problem they’re solving in business terms.
4. Reps Are Talking More Than the Buyer
According to Gong.io, top-performing sales reps talk less than 50% of the time in discovery calls. The more your rep talks, the less they learn. If your team dominates the conversation, they’re likely pitching instead of diagnosing.
Fix it: Coach reps to use layered questions—questions that build on each other—to keep buyers talking. For example:
❌ “Are you struggling with customer churn?” (Yes/No answer)
✅ “Walk me through what happens when a customer churns. What does that cost your team?” (Forces them to reveal real impact)
5. Your Team Struggles to Justify Price
If discounts are the go-to strategy to close deals, it’s because your team isn’t tying your product to a business-critical issue. When discovery is weak, pricing becomes the main sticking point.
Fix it: Teach reps to anchor pricing to value, not features. If your solution saves the company $500K, your price isn’t an expense—it’s an investment.
How to Improve Your Discovery Process
If any of those red flags sound familiar, it’s time to overhaul your discovery process. Here’s how:
1. Adopt a Problem-Centric Approach
Your product isn’t the story—the customer’s problem is. Shift the focus from what you do to what’s broken in their business. Train your reps to think like business consultants, not just sellers.
2. Use a Standardized Discovery Framework
Discovery isn’t an art—it’s a process. The best teams follow a structured approach to uncover needs. If your team doesn’t have a repeatable system, their discovery will be inconsistent.
(Want a proven framework? Download TeamRevenue’s Discovery Call Scorecard to evaluate your team’s performance.)
3. Coach Ruthlessly
Discovery isn’t a “set it and forget it” skill. Sales leaders need to review call recordings, provide feedback, and reinforce great discovery habits constantly. The best teams don’t just train once a year—they refine every week.
4. Reinforce Accountability
Hold your team to a high standard. If a rep can’t clearly articulate the buyer’s pain, impact, and urgency, they shouldn’t be moving the deal forward. Make strong discovery a non-negotiable.
5. Stop Measuring Activity—Measure Understanding
Too many sales organizations track calls made and demos scheduled. These metrics are meaningless if reps aren’t conducting high-quality discovery. Instead, measure:
- % of deals with clearly quantified pain
- % of deals with multiple stakeholders engaged
- % of deals with defined impact and urgency
The Bottom Line
The difference between an elite sales team and an average one comes down to this: strong discovery. It’s the foundation of every closed deal, every accurate forecast, and every healthy pipeline. If your team isn’t mastering discovery, they’re working twice as hard for half the results.
Want to see how your team stacks up? Download TeamRevenue’s Discovery Call Scorecard and start turning weak conversations into closed deals.
TeamRevenue, empowers businesses to drive sustainable growth. We provide our clients with the revenue enablement experts, best practices, and an accountability framework to optimize revenue teams, systems, and processes to drive results. We’ve worked with hundreds of B2B companies worldwide, breaking the cycle of underperformance. Helping them grow faster, communicate better and bring new energy to their organizations.
