What a day yesterday. A long but great day. It started off with a morning filled with AI and strategy, and ended with a talk about discovery.

One of the things that we don't talk about enough is that sales is much more than just asking for the transaction. Sales is really this process of understanding your prospect, and then your client you want to keep over the lifetime of your work with that client. It's different for different professions. It's different for different people, because we're all different. Shocking. Quite frankly, I'm just amazed at my own simplistic brilliance there. Not really.

But when you get down to it, discovery is about being curious, but also being competent.

Prepare So Well You Don't Use Your Preparation

You need to think in advance about what's important to that person and what is going to advance their agenda. And then, ironically, the purpose of preparation is so that you can be unscripted. So that you can actually be present fully, having really thought about the situation, having formed kind of a matrix in your brain about how you ask questions, how you understand humans and the businesses that they run, so that you can actually listen.

And that's the crazy part. I admit it. Imagine you're brand new to sales, or you're brand new to being a consultant or coach, and somebody like me says, "Hey, you need to prepare so well that you don't actually use your preparation."

And that's really what we're talking about.

We're talking about being able to dial enough understanding inside of yourself, into your conscious and your subconscious, so that you can truly understand not only what the client is saying verbally and nonverbally, but what the next questions are. That's more important.

It's not a checklist. It's actually a series of responsive questions that help you uncover real truth, help you uncover certainty and clarity for you and the prospect. And what that then drives is trust, transparency, further discovery and insight, and then real engagement for the client.

It Isn't About How Good I Am

One of the biggest shifts for me in my professional life has been an awareness that it literally isn't about how good I am or how much I know.

It's only about how willing that client is to pursue some form of change. To engage with me in a process of both testing and then exploring and deepening, expanding a conceptual change process. And then choosing, out of trust and out of belief and out of confidence, to select me to help with that process.

And then they do it. The most important thing is them doing it.

I always say the secret to being a great coach is great athletes.

Qualification Is Not About Who Can Afford You

Qualification is not about you figuring out who can afford to pay you. That's kind of baked into the process, because you're selling.

What discovery really is, is identifying if that person in front of you, that potential client, is someone who has the best possible chance to achieve the best possible results from working with you.

You feel me? You get me? Discovery is not about whether or not they can pay you. It's whether or not they're going to be able to get the most out of this commitment.

We don't know if we're going to be here tomorrow, folks. That business owner looking to work with you, in my case a business owner thinking about doing a referral system, is looking at other employees, money, time, distraction, things like that, and making a bet. I think this is important enough. I think this is critical enough to the business that we're going to take a risk here. We're going to invest the money and the time and the emotional commitment to make this happen.

And when they do, man, it's unbelievable.

Inside Your Head, Inside Your Heart

Long story short. Start phrasing this inside your head, and inside your heart as well, because discovery is both cognitive and emotional.

Start framing this process of qualification around how well that client is going to be suited for getting the most out of what you do. Those are the clients you really want, because those are the clients that get the most out of it. And clients that get the most out of it are most likely to refer you.

Be real. Be human. Be authentic.

Related: Stop Networking. Start Building Referral Multipliers.