technical-discovery

name

technical-discovery

description

Run value-based technical discovery before any demo or POC — frame the deal with MEDDPICC, surface the prospect's pain and its quantified business impact, identify the decision criteria/process/champion, and capture it all in the discovery-notes template so the demo can be tailored to real pain. Reach for this when the user has (or just had) a discovery call, or is about to demo with no discovered pain. Used by `sales-engineer` (primary) and `poc-evaluation-lead`.

Skill: technical-discovery

Invoked by: sales-engineer (primary); poc-evaluation-lead re-runs it lightly to confirm the pain a POC must prove.

When to invoke: "I have a discovery call coming up"; "we're about to demo but haven't really discovered"; "what should I be uncovering?"; any deal where the pain isn't yet named and quantified.

Output: a MEDDPICC-framed discovery plan + the pain/metric/decision-criteria questions to ask, captured in ../../templates/technical-discovery-notes.md.

Procedure

1. Frame the deal with MEDDPICC. Walk ../../knowledge/discovery-and-demo-playbook.md: Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion, Competition. Mark which letters you already know and which are gaps — the gaps are your discovery agenda.
2. Find the pain, then quantify it. A pain with no business impact ("it's a bit slow") doesn't sell. Push to the Metric: what does the pain cost in time / money / risk / missed revenue, and who feels it? This is the number the demo and the business case hang on.
3. Map the decision. Who decides, against what criteria, by when, through what paper/procurement/security process? A technical win with no decision map stalls in procurement.
4. Test for a champion, not just a contact. A champion has power, has personal pain, and will sell for you internally. Distinguish champion vs coach vs blocker.
5. Capture and confirm. Write it into the discovery-notes template and reflect it back to the prospect ("so the critical issue is X, costing Y — did I get that right?"). Confirmed pain is the contract the demo is built against.

Output

The filled discovery-notes template + the prioritized list of remaining MEDDPICC gaps + a one-line critical business issue statement the demo will be built to resolve. Hand off to demo-design only once pain is named and quantified.

Anti-patterns this skill prevents

• Demoing into a vacuum (no discovered pain → a feature tour).
• A "pain" with no quantified business impact (nothing for the business case to stand on).
• Mistaking a friendly contact for a champion.
• Skipping the decision/paper process and getting ambushed by procurement or security late.