discovery-planning

Discovery Planning

Purpose

Walk into discovery with a plan, not a checklist. Produce a hypothesis-driven question tree, a ladder that drives every pain to quantified impact and ranked priority, the stakeholders you intend to surface, and a structured question plan you can run live.

Inputs

• The account and who you're meeting (name, role, function)
• What you already know (prior calls, emails, CRM, public research)
• The goal of this call — what you're trying to learn and what advance you want next

Method

1. Build a hypothesis-driven question tree

Don't list questions — list hypotheses, then hang questions off each one. A hypothesis is your best guess at a problem this buyer likely has, given their role/segment/triggers.

Hypothesis: "Reps lose deals because no one sees risk until it's too late"
├─ Open: "Walk me through how you find out a deal is slipping today."
├─ Probe (if confirmed): "How far in advance? Who flags it?"
├─ Probe (if denied):    "So you catch slippage early — what's your tell?"
└─ Disconfirm:           "When did this last surprise you, if ever?"

Rules for a good tree:

• 3–5 hypotheses max. More than that means you haven't prioritized.
• Each branch has an open question to surface, probes to deepen, and a disconfirming question so you're not just fishing for confirmation.
• Order branches by likelihood × deal impact, not by your product's feature list.

2. Run the pain → impact → priority ladder

For every pain that surfaces, climb three rungs before moving on. Don't leave a pain sitting on rung one.

Rung	Question shape	What you're getting
Pain	"What's hard about X today?"	The named problem
Impact	"What does that cost you — time, money, deals, risk?"	Consequence
Priority	"Where does fixing this rank against everything else on your plate?"	Urgency / mandate

A pain with no impact is a complaint. A pain with impact but no priority won't get budget. You need all three rungs to qualify.