This is a valid concern! Too many one-way questions can feel like an interrogation or inquisition.
Hospital Analogy: Imagine being handed a ten-page questionnaire that you need to complete before you can see the doctor, including line after line of detailed questions about your medical history, relatives, prescriptions, insurance, and on and on. Even worse, you don’t have answers to many of the questions, leaving you concerned that you’ll ever see the doctor at all!
Solution? While we need to complete gathering the information we require in our discovery processes, we must also offer information, guidance, and insights in return. Discovery needs to be perceived as a two-way conversation, where both parties each learn something new. In doing discovery, we accomplish this by offering quid pro quo comments, observations, and success stories.
These can range from insights into how other customers have addressed similar challenges, or even simple comments such as, “You are not alone…!” See the section on “Empathy and Quid Pro Quo” in Doing Discovery for more guidelines on this important practice.
Your prospect should feel that they also took away new and useful information from the discovery conversation. Think win-win.
This is #4 from The Dirty Dozen of Discovery Don’ts – you can find all twelve here! https://lnkd.in/evUnp8YV
You can find the full set of DO’s and DON’Ts in Doing Discovery: