How to be Discovery Ready with Bruce Scheer and Mike Wilkinson

Bruce Scheer: Welcome to the ValuePros Show where value pros get value ready. Hi. I'm your host, Bruce Scheer. In this episode, we're joined by value selling expert, Mike Wilkinson, one of our value pros affiliate. We're gonna discuss a critical skill for sales professionals, how to be discovery ready. This is one of 10 crucial dimensions in our value ready framework, and Mike is here to share his expertise. As a best selling author and international speaker known as the price getter, Mike helps teams maximize their effectiveness through value based selling. We'll unpack why discovery is so important, how to solve the value mystery for each customer, and provide practical tips for more effective discovery conversations.

Bruce Scheer: Whether you're new to sales or a seasoned pro, you won't wanna miss Mike's insights on this foundational skill. And don't forget to check out our other episodes covering the remaining 9 dimensions of the value ready framework. Let's dive in. Hey, Mike. Great to see you again. Thanks for coming back to the ValuePros Show. And our topic today is how to be discovery ready. But, Mike, if we could, kick us off with why should we be discovery ready? What's the rationale for this whole thing?

Mike Wilkinson: Well, I think, actually, the question really is why is discovery so important at all? And I think we touched on the introduction when we said that actually that something is going to take place during the value discovery process. But I think that there are loads of reasons why it's important, but I think there are 4 key reasons I'd like to cover. So here are those 4 key reasons. I said, I'm sure there are more, but I think there are some that are really critical. First of all, being customer centric, we need to understand the things that are important from an individual customer's perspective, what the challenges and what the issues are. So having that degree of customer centricity is really important. For me, it's one of the biggest changes that lots of sales people go from moving from a product first sales conversation to a customer first sales conversation. And for me, that is absolutely the most important part of the whole thing.

Mike Wilkinson: I think the second thing is about competitive advantage. Because I think if we are doing a really good discovery conversation with our customers, our customers will find that to be a fairly unique experience. You quoted some numbers, last time around about just how effective effective salespeople can be or ineffective, should I say, at actually having those sorts of customer focused conversations. It also comes down to I think about resource allocation as well. Because if we really understand what it is our customers are looking for, we can be much more focused in the delivery of our resources to make sure that we're meeting their requirements effective. And then for me, the 4th, and by no means the final, but the 4th of a lengthy 4, is it just enhances customer relationships. I think if customers see that we are genuinely interested and genuinely curious about them and their business, then the quality of the relationship almost inevitably will be significantly improved.

Bruce Scheer: I love these reasons, Mike. You've really nailed it in terms of why this is so critical and imperative to have good value discovery, And it is. It is all about the customer. Mike, I can't tell you how many times. I've supported sales teams and I've had sellers reach out to me that are very product centric. They're kinda stuck in their way. Both guns blaring, if you would. Not listening, not going deeper, not making sure they're connected with that customer, fostering that bond that you like to talk about, and truly exploring other things that I'm sure you're gonna talk about.

Bruce Scheer: But, yeah, this is a lovely rendition of why it's so important to focus on value discovery.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. I think the danger for a lot of salespeople is that they want to talk about the things that they feel the most confident about. And the thing they feel most confident about are the products and services they provide, and that's why they do it. Getting involved in discovery is, I found, for a lot of sellers, quite a journey to go on. Becoming increasingly confident in having free flowing conversations with a customer is actually quite a challenge for them.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. Yeah. No. Definitely. It takes a lot of confidence. It takes everything that we've been talking about in terms of building trust, doing your homework, showing up prepared, etcetera.

Mike Wilkinson: So I think leading on from that, given that our entire ethos is around value, let me ask everybody a question. Do you and your sales teams understand value? And I know that's a strange question. But if you think about it, we use this word value all the time, and we make the assumption that everybody knows what we're talking about. But I would challenge you. Do you actually understand what value is both as a concept and perhaps more importantly in terms of what it means to your customer?

Bruce Scheer: Great question. Yeah. That's what we need to be doing for sure. Thanks, Mike.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. Now this is a question that I ask salespeople and sales directors and sales VPs all the time, and I get a whole variety of different answers. And I particularly asked this question at a conference in Copenhagen some years ago, to a group who had told me all day that the thing that they delivered to their customers was great value. So I challenged to tell me exactly what that was. And the idea was that we were gonna come up with a definition of value, beginning with the words value is. So I said to them, all I want is value is what? And after about 20 minutes of deliberation and 10 different definitions, all of which were different, but not massively, obviously there were some similarities. We finally agreed and came up with the ultimate definition of value. And that definition is value is a mystery.

Mike Wilkinson: Now I've got to tell you, when I first saw this, I thought that is absolutely ridiculous. What what sort of a definition is that you may well ask yourself? But I would challenge you. Just think about that. Until you understand your customer's perception of value and what is important from their point of view, to all intents and purposes, value is a mystery. And on that basis, we have a very simple job. If we accept that the challenge is that value is

Bruce Scheer: a mystery, then clearly we have a simple job to do, and that is to solve the value mystery. And I guess the question more than anything else is how on earth do we do that, and why is it so important? Excellent. Mike, in all my years, being into the business value space, literally from 2,000 building value calculators for clients, etcetera, and helping sellers sell based on business value. This is just so fun and such a refreshing and simple definition of value. Value is a mystery. And when I read it in one of your books, I just absolutely loved it, Mike, and the backstory of how you came about with this. Because I do I agree with you. It is a fundamental mystery.

Bruce Scheer: How could you contend what the value is for a customer when you aren't the customer and you don't know how they perceive value? And there's so many different dimensions of value. Value to them as individuals, their functional area, the company, all these different things, the industry. How would you know or even pretend to know what the value is until you dialogue? And, again, our topic, you discover what that value is. So I just love the framing. It's a mystery. I love the super sleuth spy there in the corner of this visual, which even makes this intriguing and and a bit fun too. Hey. It's time to solve the value mystery.

Bruce Scheer: We gotta figure that out. It certainly is. And that is our job to solve the value mystery. And I think part of the problem, Bruce, is that we assume we know.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. We already know what the customer needs, and this is why value discovery is so important. We don't. We make so many assumptions about what customers are looking for, and we present our proposal on that basis without taking the time and the trouble to really understand. And you talked talked earlier on about how many salespeople would come into you and just have conversations about what they can do. Well, I don't give a shit what they can do until I know that they understand what I want done. Then I start to begin to be interested. But if they don't have that conversation, it starts to become really difficult.

Mike Wilkinson: And the reason it is so important and I say to people this if there is one side that I want people to take away with them always, it is the question why is this so important. And it's important for a very simple reason, and that is that value is defined by your customers not by you. To be honest, it doesn't matter how many hours you have spent in darkened rooms coming up with all the great reasons why somebody should buy, Fimeon, the fabulous value that you think you deliver. If your customers don't see it that way, it isn't value. And it's as simple as that. I love it.

Bruce Scheer: Gosh. And it is. The simplicity in this is profound. I think Einstein said something about the ultimate sign of intelligence is how simple something is. But just holding on to this principle of value is defined by your customers, not by you. Hence, stream back to value is a mystery, and it needs to be discovered. Hence, our topic here being discovery ready. It's profoundly simple. I would argue mastered by few, Mike, until they go through your training and and really take this principle.

Mike Wilkinson: It is interesting how we get locked into the assumption that we know what is great value for our customers. But the reality is, as I said, that if your customer doesn't see it as value, then to all intents and purposes, it isn't value. Doesn't matter what you think it is, if it's not value. Yeah. I think it was also it was Mark Twain who also said everything I do in this whole area of value in all the training I do is about simplifying the complex, not complicating the simple. It's so easy to make things complicated. It's so much more difficult to make them simple and workable. Yeah.

Bruce Scheer: And it's masterful. That's why I love these principles that you're laying out for us. God, if a fraction of people followed them, as we talked about in a previous episode about value readiness, the upside is just massive. 48% increase in close rate or win rate. I think it was 35% increase in deal sizes and then 25% shorter sales cycle, meaning more time selling, more deals closed. Who doesn't want that when you're following these types of principles, especially around this critical area, Mike, as you and I have talked about being discovery ready.

Mike Wilkinson: At its simplest, I absolutely guarantee that if people are not doing this and they buy into it, it is transformational. The the problem I find is very often that intellectually people buy into it. It's logical that you would find out what your customer needs before you actually come up with the solution as to what it is you're gonna give them. And intellectually, they buy into that. But then practically, they go back out into the field and default to where they were before, which is the product first sales conversation. And Yeah. That takes a lot of work. It sounds like it shouldn't.

Mike Wilkinson: It sounds like it should be easy, but it isn't easy. It does take time. It takes effort. It takes training. It takes coaching, support, all the things that help to encourage the behavioral change that you're effectively asking people to go through.

Bruce Scheer: True. True. Yeah. At the end of the day, what I like to talk about, Mike, is just identifying, connecting those value dot so the buyer can buy. We're really figuring that out with them, which you're talking about here in this episode. How do you describe it?

Mike Wilkinson: So I think when we're thinking about having these conversations with our clients, I always try to get people to think about what it is likely to be that they're gonna see when they get into them. And for most salespeople, they have experience. They know the business segments they're working with. They know the sort of customers they're working with. So there is nothing wrong with making some assumptions, but what is wrong is working on those assumptions. So I look at a concept which I call generic and specific issues. And generic issues are the issues that you can anticipate as being common to all of the businesses that you're gonna call on in a given business segment. And my guess is that if you just sat down for a minute and thought about the major customers you see, the key customers that you see, you could write down now the issues that you would normally expect to find.

Mike Wilkinson: The key though is not to act upon those. It's to test those assumptions in conversation with the customer. Because what you need to do is you need to translate generic into specific. And specific issues are the issues that are absolutely unique to individual customers within the business sector that you're dealing with. And the question there is, how on earth do I do that? And I think that the simple answer is you have to explore those key value drivers through really great questioning, listening, and summarizing. I call that QLS. If you like the key to effective sales communication. And if you get those three things right, then you will transform the approach that you have to the kinds of conversations that you have with customers.

Mike Wilkinson: But the other transforming part of that is being genuinely interested and genuinely curious. It's about going out and having conversations with customers because you want to find out, not because that's something that somebody's told you that you need to do.

Bruce Scheer: Excellent. Mike, I like what you're seeing here in moving from generic to specific. And the QLS, the questioning, listening, and summarizing principle that you just talked about or practice, That's brilliant in how you do this. I just wanted to highlight though that in order to be able to do this, to be invited to do this, you do need to show up at having built trust. And you do that by doing the the homework, studying the industry, the client, and having a grasp of the generic issues. Because you can even say to the customer, hey, when I talk to my other clients, here are some of the things that I hear them talking about, some of the challenges that they have, and and some of the value they might realize that those challenges go away. But then you shift over, but what about you? Where are you on this particular thing, challenge? And that allows you to go more specific and ask the right question and listen and summarize. You're earning the right just through your credibility and the fact that you built your trust.

Bruce Scheer: You did that client readiness. You did your homework.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. And I think it goes back to what we said, I think, when we were together last time, but all of these things within the assessment fit totally together. To to be able to have this sort of conversation, you need to be buyer ready. You need to have done your background research. That's for sure. And generic issues, the understanding of generic issues plays a great role in all of this. It helps you to prepare. If you can anticipate the issues that you are going to face, you can be better prepared to deal with them when you do face them.

Mike Wilkinson: If you find yourself sat in front of a customer and you've done your rapport building and you lean back in your chair and you say, tell me a little bit about the challenges that you're facing right now, and they say, we don't really have any. No. It's a rep. It's a rep that currently but what generic issues allows you to do is to say, well, do you know what I'm talking to similar people in the sort of roles that you have? The kind of issues I'm finding they're telling me about at the moment are this, this, and this, to what extent did they apply in your situation? And I think what you find is that is a fantastic catalyst to start the conversation going. And certainly in my experience, once they find one that they can feel comfortable with, the floodgates help.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. Absolutely. That's my experience as well. Perfect. So, Mike, hey. This has been great so far. What else would might you advise us on how to be discovery ready? Any other tips and thinking that we should be thinking about or doing to be discovery ready? What else would you have to add?

Mike Wilkinson: Well, I think it it comes back initially. Being discovery ready for me is all about having done your background research. It's all about anticipating the kinds of things that your customer might wish to talk about. It is absolutely not about going in with a flip chart with or a clipboard with 20 questions written on it, because this is about having a conversation with your customer, not subjecting your customer to an interrogation. And the way I like to think about it is try and imagine in your mind's eye that you just sat down having a cup of coffee and a chat with them, and have a conversation like that. I think a lot of salespeople, I don't know why, but they do find sometimes this is quite intimidating. And I think the more you can sort of picture in your mind's eye that you are having a chat rather than a discovery conversation, if you like, the easier it helps to make. And, also, when we get together for training, I do have, if you like, a route map through this conversation so that we can take the customer on a value journey of discovery.

Mike Wilkinson: And it's a value journey of discovery, not just for us, but it's often a value journey discovery for them as well, which is interesting in its own way. So I think those are important points to bear in mind.

Bruce Scheer: I think, Mike, you mentioned something that I thought was pretty compelling that you need to be comfortable in doing this and kinda have the confidence. And I'd like all the value pros watching this to know that, hey. That's your job. They will appreciate that. When you ask a compelling question, you're gonna hear, hey. That's a good question. And then they're gonna think, and then they're gonna respond. And in so doing, you're helping them identify those potential points of value.

Bruce Scheer: And that gets you a value professional and and that people love value professionals because you're helping them achieve more value in their life, take away their pain and suffrage, and and things get better when you do your job well helping them identify these points of value. So it's a hold your head. I have confidence. That's why you're there

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah.

Bruce Scheer: As a value professional.

Mike Wilkinson: You've just made an interesting point there, I think, about being a value professional. And what we've talked about is value professionals being people who want to explore value with the customer. Value professionals don't turn up assuming they already know. A real value professional, a key part of what they're trying to do is to understand what value looks like from the customer's point of view. And I think the other point is that you are understanding it from the individuals within the customer's point of view. We're not understanding what value looks like for the business. We're looking at what it looks like for the individuals within it, because everybody will have a slightly different perspective. So if you're talking to finance or health and safety or operations or whatever it is, each of them will have a different view of what value looks like from their point of view.

Bruce Scheer: And we have to be aware of that. Absolutely, Mike. You and I have talked about this in the past, but I like to think of 3 levels of value typically. It's the individual I'm talking to, what's value for them? How am I gonna help them get promoted in life, do things better, faster for whatever they're up to in their functional area? But, of course, I want that individual stakeholder to see the value and be recognized for the value they're creating. Then I wanna think about their functional area. Where's the value there? And then also typically up to the corporate objectives or initiatives. How can I tie that value back to helping the business, the company win? So that's really important thinking across that. So not just having a standard list of questions, but really digging in with the key stakeholders, helping them identify the points of value for themselves, for the functional area, and for the business, getting their take on that, helping you help them in defining that.

Bruce Scheer: The other thing, again, I just love the value mystery because I think of us as value professionals like Sherlock Holmes, if you would, if everybody knows the Sherlock Holmes. When Sherlock's on the case, oh, shit. Things are gonna change. We're gonna solve the mystery.

Mike Wilkinson: But at this point, if they don't know Sherlock Holmes now, Bruce, they will be by

Bruce Scheer: the time they've finished on this particular Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. Well, Mike, I think this probably is a wrap point for this episode. I've really loved the discussion. Thank you so much.

Mike Wilkinson: I was trying to leave it on a a hanging edge because we wanted to buy into this. I want people to, like, shit. What's he gonna talk about Sherlock Holmes? However, if you have been watching or listening to some of my LinkedIn, so I've done a series of posts using Sherlock Hope to solve value mysteries.

Bruce Scheer: Excellent. Yeah. I would love to encourage people. If you're not connected with Mike Wilkinson yet, definitely connect with Mike on LinkedIn, and you're gonna get a lot of more reinforcement. And thinking about how to do this is one of the most critical things you can be doing in helping your customers identify the value and be able to buy. Absolutely. Well, Mike, thanks so much for this episode. It's been wonderful.

Mike Wilkinson: It's been fun. Thanks, Bruce.

Bruce Scheer: Well, that wraps up our conversation on being discovery ready with Mike Wilkinson. We've covered the importance of understanding value from the customer's perspective, how to move from generic to specific issues, and techniques for having meaningful value discovery conversations. Remember, as Mike emphasized, discovery is about having a conversation, not an interrogation. This episode is just one piece of our comprehensive value ready framework. I encourage you to watch our related episodes to gain insights into all 10 critical dimensions of being value ready. And to assess your own skills across these dimensions, visit valuepros.io and take our value ready assessment. It's off the resources tab. It's a great way to identify areas for improvement in your value based selling approach.

Bruce Scheer: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the ValuePros Show and connect with Mike and me on LinkedIn for more insights. Until next time, keep discovering value and striving to be value ready.