Discovery — Structured or Instinctive?

The story: Remember — we agreed this meeting is about discovery. They walked in aligned. They walked out in an argument. You skipped half the qualification questions! I was listening closely and followed the right lead. She meant discovery as a process — a structured checklist of questions to qualify the opportunity. He meant discovery as a practice — reading the room, following the conversation, and uncovering what matters by listening. She wanted coverage. He wanted depth. Both called it discovery.

What it means for organisations: Sales teams argue about discovery more than almost any other stage — not because they disagree on its importance, but because they’ve never agreed on what it actually looks like. Is discovery a checklist you complete or a conversation you navigate? When a team aligns on "let’s run a proper discovery" without defining whether that means systematic qualification or intuitive exploration, they don’t just run different meetings. They evaluate each other’s performance against a standard neither has made explicit — and the feedback afterwards feels unfair to both sides.