How to handle sales people who get nervous when CSM's ask my disruptive discovery questions

"As a customer success professional, I work accounts in tandem with #sales. Some of them panic when I ask these (bold, disruptive, open-ended) discovery questions, even if the answers I get are great. Any advice for working with nervous sales folk?"

That is an actual question from my webinar this week with Involve.ai - and I've heard it before. Here's my answer:

Quick background

• True, many sales folks are trained to choreograph and script customer/prospect interactions to get the answers they want - the answers that will advance towards the salesperson's desired outcome.
• Customer discovery is often considered more of a formality that is compartmentalized to the early part of the sales cycle.
• Questions are often leading vs. open-ended. Sales believes that leading questions keep them in "the driver's seat" on the call, while open-ended questions may lead to other topics.

But consider the facts...

• Customers are begging sales to listen more and better (image at left below). The Rain Group, a leading sales consulting and training company, asked buyers what factors most influence their purchase decision. The first is "Leading a thorough discovery of my concerns, wants and needs." The third: "Listening to me."
• Sales folks who listen more sell more. In their analysis of 1 million recorded sales calls (image at right below), Gong.io found that "star reps" talk less than half the time while "average reps" talk more than two-thirds of the time. (BTW, on my discovery calls, customers talk 85% of the time, on average.)

• My experience in conducting nearly 2,600 customer discovery conversations is that customers have a lot to say about their problems, priorities and challenges but aren't given the time and space to communicate those. Open-ended questions are the key to achieving trust and getting customers to feel comfortable expanding on topics important TO THEM. This in turn enables you to understand and best address their real-world needs.
• At the end of my discovery calls, customers often thank ME! "Why?" I ask, "are you thanking me? I want to thank you for your time!" "Because," they reply, "not enough vendors ask these kinds of questions. I feel as though I got to talk about what was important to us."

My suggestions:

1. Nicely remind sales that your role is customer SUCCESS, which means understanding what's important from the customer's point of view so you can retain them, add value and, when the opportunity arises, grow revenue. Therefore you may need to ask questions different from the typical (cliche) discovery questions. 
2. Point out that the answers customers gave were "great," and explain why and how these insights will help towards your common objectives with sales.
   
3. Politely share the research above to educate them on the importance of listening - based on how important it is to customers - and also to their paychecks!
4. Feel free to blame your Radically Authentic Discovery approach on this guy Bob London who has done a ton of discovery calls!

Questions? Email me at bob@chieflisteningofficers.com.