“Clients would not pay for Discovery.”
“It will take too long.”
“The client says it’s a simple Sales Cloud implementation.”
“Your CV says you’ve done lots of NPSP projects before. You can do this with your eyes closed. You don’t need a Discovery. Besides, it’s not how our company works”
🚩🚩🚩
😣
Even if the pre-sales team is really good.
Even if it’s a small project.
The Delivery team really needs to do some level of Discovery, even if it’s just to CONFIRM expectations.
So much tacit context and nuance is lost when the Delivery team isn’t involved in the sales process, so it is really important for them to get a good feel of how deep the water goes. 🤿
In companies where sales team are incentivised solely on commission and not on project success or completion, it isn’t surprising that they will behave exactly as they do.
High Performance Teams ≠ doing more with fewer resources.
It’s about shared vision, shared ownership and deep empathy between team mates.
Traditionally, the Sales team and the Delivery team have been very much a THEM and US situation. ⚔
This needs to change into an ALL OF US situation before consulting partners can create an organisation where successful projects delivered by great people become the norm.
Until then, or until there is a way to capture and transfer ALL tacit contextual information from Sales and transmit them directly into the braincells of the Delivery team… RUNNING A DISCOVERY IS A MUST.
It should be a non-negotiable activity. 🙅🏻♀️
Because it’s about uncovering the unknown unknowns, and those with skin in the game (i.e. the Delivery team that is in charge of fulfiling the SOW) needs to know what those unknown unknowns are so that risks can be mitigated.
Doing anything else is just short-term thinking.
Yes, I hear the “but the client won’t pay for it” argument.
It costs a lot more for the partner to do ‘damage control’ both tangible (where you write-off time to ‘fix’ issues you should have uncovered during a Discovery) or intangible (losing the trust of your client).
Besides, that’s really just a commercial discussion.
Charge it up front, and then give the client a rebate when they engage you for the project implementation.
Or don’t charge for it and bump up your implementation day rate.
Not doing it is just silly.
It’s like jumping into a pond with nothing but a teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini and not realising there’s a shark in there that craves polka dots 🦈
🙄 I guess if you have high appetite for risk and you enjoy adventure, then go for it.
It’s fine if you’re a solo consultant jumping into a project, but if you’re a partner, and you’re in charge of other human souls, then do the #leadership thing.
What do you think?
Have you got any stories to tell about projects with or without Discoveries?