On a recent episode of The Sales Hunter Podcast, Mark sat down with Becc Holland, founder of Flip the Script, to tear down outdated discovery tactics and reveal what today’s buyers actually want from a sales conversation.
Why Discovery Calls Are Broken
Most sellers focus on surface-level discovery. They try to uncover the buyer’s pain or the business problem with questions like “What motivated you to buy?” or “What’s the cost of inaction?” According to Becc Holland, these questions miss the mark:
“Buyers today, they don’t want to give up that information because that just hands the seller leverage.”
Modern buyers know the game. Sharing too much gives the seller a pricing advantage, so they clam up. The result? Long discovery calls that could’ve been emails, and little real insight exchanged.
Be the Doctor, Not the Order Taker
The best salespeople now act like diagnosticians finding what the buyer doesn’t know about their own world.
As Becc Holland puts it:
“The purpose of the discovery conversation should be to find out things that they don’t know, things that they believe that aren’t true, and things that they’ve missed entirely about their current state and future state.”
It’s about adding value by uncovering blind spots, not just confirming what the buyer already knows or wants to share.
Why KPIs Matter More Than Ever
Great discovery hinges on understanding what your buyer is measured on. For each persona—whether it’s an IT director, CISO, or marketing exec—there are specific KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that drive their role and decisions.
Becc Holland breaks KPIs into three types:
- Lagging indicators: The end result (what they’re ultimately judged by, like server uptime or SQLs from marketing).
- Leading indicators: Inputs or actions that drive towards the lagging goal (such as ad spend or network stability).
- Coincidental indicators: Real-time metrics they monitor (like click-through rates or network latency).
Sellers typically skip this step and jump to features or pain points. Instead, the seller who can speak the buyer’s KPI language earns instant credibility.
“If you don’t know anything about IT directors in general, they’ll want to spend zero time with you.”
Build Trust by Teaching, Not Pitching
Modern buyers only want sellers involved if they add value to the process. But the data is clear: most buyers say sellers know too little about their own product or the buyer’s needs.
Building trust comes down to three things:
- Proving you know the truth (having the facts).
- Having the right intent (agenda to help, not just sell).
- Demonstrating real ability (can you spot what others miss?).
Delivering one insight the buyer didn’t know changes the tone of the entire call. Drop three insights, and you don’t just look smart. You become a resource.
How to Find KPI Blind Spots Fast
You don’t have to be a technical expert to become an expert question-asker. Use AI or simple research to uncover:
- The top lagging indicators for each persona.
- The industry average benchmarks for each KPI.
- Thresholds where problems start (for example, 200ms+ network latency affecting uptime).
Ask direct, diagnostic questions: “What’s your backup success rate?” or “How does your network latency compare to industry standards?”
When the buyer gives an answer, share relevant benchmarks or consequences. This instantly changes the dynamic. The seller is now bringing expertise, not just taking orders.
Tackle Status Quo and Indecision Early
Most deals are lost to inaction or status quo. Not because the problem isn’t big enough, but because the buyer isn’t confident the seller can deliver something new, or isn’t worth the risk.
To beat the status quo, bring new information to the very start of the conversation. Don’t rely on “rapport-building” or a perfect opener. Instead, get to the KPIs and uncover something the buyer wasn’t aware of. Every time the buyer gets something valuable, their willingness to keep talking increases.
Make Every Discovery Call Worth Their Time
Buyers are busy. If they feel discovery isn’t moving them forward, they’ll opt for email over calls every time. But if you show up as the expert with questions and insights that change how they think, the discovery call becomes irresistible.
To get there, do the homework. Research the KPIs, prepare the questions, and deliver insights as early in the conversation as possible.
“If you find three things they didn’t know, all of a sudden they’re more sure that they can do it correctly, and they’re more sure that you’re the partner they should be sticking with.”
Final Word: Bring Real Value, Not Just Questions
Today’s buyers want to leave every sales conversation smarter than when they started. Sellers who prepare, focus on the buyer’s KPIs, and share industry insights are the ones who earn trust and drive action.
Success in discovery isn’t about perfecting the sales script—it’s about doing the homework and delivering relevant, actionable value. That’s the new bar for world-class sellers.
Becc Holland :
Foreign.
Mark Hunter :
It’s time we wake up from a coma and realize that the discovery process we’ve been on is not working. We don’t understand the value proposition. We don’t understand the buyer. I’m not talking about this alone. I’m talking about it today with Beck Holland. Oh, by the way, she ran a 5,33 mile as a seventh grader holding the city record in Plano. Why am I talking? Let’s get the show going.
Becc Holland :
Right now, you’re listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now here’s your host.
Mark Hunter :
If you can run a 5:33 mile as a seventh grader, you’re an expert in sales. Beck, welcome to the show.
Becc Holland :
Thank you very much. Now, I feel like the bar is so high now.
Mark Hunter :
You know, hey, I, I won’t ask you what you’re running now, but let’s dive into this because we got to get going. The discovery call, and this is something I’ve been, I’ve been harping on for a long time, but you really unpacked this when we were talking before we, before we hit record. Where are salespeople going wrong on the discovery in terms of really understanding the right value proposition that the customer is looking for?
Becc Holland :
Yeah. Well, I think, like, and I, I won’t pin this all on sellers. I think a lot of the lion’s share of it has to do with almost like I’m going to take accountability for, meaning the sales training industry. But the, the, you know, kind of thought process behind it is, why don’t I go in there and find out the impact to the buyer if they don’t buy, or the why behind the why, or the business problem that they want to solve, or the tactical problem that they want to solve, or, you know, what motivated them to buy, or who are the people, the landmines internally and all that’s fine and good, or what’s the cost of inaction from their point of view? And I’m like, all that’s fine and good, but, but that’s what they already know. And buyers today, they don’t want to give up that information because that just hands the seller leverage to be able to hold their guts in pricing. Because if you know that I need it more, then, like, you have more, more of a, more of a gumption or more of a business case to basically hold your guts in pricing. So I think traditionally sellers have looked at the conversation of like, well, why don’t I find the impact or why don’t I find the problem? But I’m like the whole purpose of the discovery conversation should be hypothetically one of a doctor of. I want to find out things that they don’t know, things that they believe that aren’t true, and things that they’ve missed entirely about their current state and future state condition.
Becc Holland :
Sorry for the call.
Mark Hunter :
No, I want to run with this. And if you don’t know Beck Holland, she resides now in Paris, France. She is Texas born and raised, absolute incredible seller. Her work is phenomenal. I’ve followed her for years. We’ve gotten to know each other. So Beck Holland, when she speaks, you do have to listen. Let’s talk about this because one of the pieces that I talk about in, in, in, in the discovery process is the lack of really questioning at a level to un.
Mark Hunter :
To get the seller to reveal that information.
Becc Holland :
Yeah.
Mark Hunter :
Is that where we have to be going?
Becc Holland :
Yeah. Well, I think the first thing that sellers need to do, predominantly speaking like buy across the board, you know, you have to keep in mind 82 to 87% of buyers don’t want a seller involved in the entire buyer journey. You know, and over 87% of buyers would buy a product of $500,000 or more self serve. But 92% of buyers say that they value the sales process more than they do the product themselves. So like go to market leaders have been like, well which one is it? Do you want us or do you not? And I’m like, well hypothetically they would want a seller if the seller could add value. But in their experience they don’t normally get value. Like 56 of buyers say that the AE didn’t even have enough information about their own product to be on the call. So I think the first place that they need to start is to learn about the buyer, you know, like the buyer Persona.
Becc Holland :
So let’s say that there’s a, you know it, you sell to an IT director and you sell to a ciso. Like the first thing that they need to know is the lagging indicators, the leaning indicators and the leading indication caters that what are the KPIs that they’re measured on? What are the industry averages of those KPIs and at what point do they cause a problem statistically? So they have the information that they need to be able to diagnose. So from there on out it’s just about the questions that you ask. They have to be objective questions about those indicators. But the first thing they need to know, if I don’t even know that as an IT director that you’re measured on server uptime or that the average server uptime goal is nine, nine and three nines, you know, And I say, what’s your server uptime? And you say 92. And I’m like, oh, that’s not too bad. That’s an A minus. Like you lose all credit.
Becc Holland :
Right? So like, trust is defined as three different components. You have to trust that they’re telling the truth. You have to trust in their agenda, which is where most sellers get dinged out. Like their agenda is to sell, so they, you know, the buyer shuts down. The third one is you have to trust in their ability. Once I get them to open up and I get them to, to give me information, am I getting the right information to be able to find the things that they don’t know? So it makes that like that call, quote unquote, worth it. So if you own, if you believe what the buyer believes, you know, 95 of the time, that means on 95 of your calls, it wasn’t worth it to have a call. It could have been an email.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, I want to unpack KPIs there for a bit because you, you wrench, you know, you mentioned, you know, leading, trailing and leaning or, you know. Yeah, yeah, that’s something because again, from an industry standpoint, I can begin to understand what the nuance is of the industry if I have a type icp. So hopefully I can go into this with some, a little bit of knowledge. But again, your KPIs are going to be different because it’s how do, how do I develop that level of trust and confidence in the questions I need to be asking to get the right KPIs?
Becc Holland :
Yeah, that’s a great question. Well, so many sellers have, to your point, kind of, they’ve struggled with what question do I ask? You know, what question do I ask? Because in my opinion the culprit in the whole thing is because they’re trying to get the buyer to realize something or to admit something or to lead them some, somewhere to think something. So they’re like, what question do I ask to make the buyer think that they should buy? And it’s like the goal is all wrong. The question you should be asked is what is the question that I should ask where I believe that something they said is incorrect, that they believe it’s going to hurt them if they continue to believe that? Or what is a question that I can ask that normally is a problem for people that they normally don’t know about. So it’s actually much easier than like I would have thought. So for a buyer Persona I would feed any kind of AI engine to two prompts. Essentially the first prompt would be give me the top three lagging indicators for let’s do IT director for an IT director, the industry average performance of that, of that lagging indicator and at what point the industry average goal for that lagging indicator. So that’s the first one that I would do if you want to do three and then say what’s the most important one? So they’ll give you the, you know, the indicator of a server uptime, for instance.
Becc Holland :
And the second prompt I would feed is give me the top 20 or top 40. Leaning or coincidental is what they’re called a market coincidental indicator and leading indicator KPIs that cause a decrease in server uptime, the industry average of those KPIs and, and at what point they cause a problem with server with decreasing server uptime in a chart format. So we’ll spit out all of these KPIs and it’ll be like network latency. So the average network latency is less than 100 milliseconds. Anything over 200 milliseconds it’s going to cause a problem with server a 20% decrease in server uptime. So the question that I’m asking is they’re like no, no, no, we’re all good on network latency. I’m like well what do you mean by all good? So I do it in a three question format. I’m like what do you mean by all good? And they’re like well we’re 400 milliseconds.
Becc Holland :
Mike found one. They think they’re all good and it’s above average. So I’m like interesting. They’re like what do you mean by what’s so interesting? And I’m like well, industry average network latency is sub 100 milliseconds. But statistically speaking anything over 200 milliseconds can cause a 20% decrease in server uptime. And you have just added a piece of value of something that they don’t know. And the third question or the third step is I change the subject to a KPI that I do think it could be. What is the indicator that I think that it could be in terms of, of what’s causing the server downtime.
Becc Holland :
So I’d be like, what’s your backup success rate, if you don’t mind me asking. So if you get those KPIs 20, 40 of them and you memorize five of them, you’ll be good. 10 of them, you’ll be really good. 15, 20, you’re going to start to be deadly of like it, directors are going to want to spend time with people who know things about them that they don’t know. If you don’t know anything about them, not about them in specific, if you don’t know anything about it, directors in general, they’ll want to spend zero time with you. If you like, you can do as many permission based openers as you want and talk slow or fast and smile and dial or whatever it is. But once you get through all that rigmarole, you’re going to get to the back end. And the problem where I see most people hanging up cold calls or most people losing in discovery for two different reasons, status quo and indecision.
Becc Holland :
Both they’re caused by the seller not knowing enough to be able to help find things that they don’t know, whether it’s in regards to something that they sell or not.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, you just dropped in the last 1 minute and 58 seconds an incredible amount of wisdom that I think people have got to go back and listen to this again because you honed in on a couple things. One, KPIs. And I don’t think sellers understand the role KPIs play in, in a buyer’s mindset. They just literally, because they’re walking past trying to get the sale. And yet the KPI is what drives everything. So let’s go back. You did a great, magnificent job of using AI to help do that. How do I get enough stature with the, with the buyer to be able to ask KPI focused questions?
Becc Holland :
Yeah. So I mean, the first thing that I would do if I was a new rep, if I was an older rep, whatever it is like, you have to keep in mind the only difference from buyer Persona to buyer Persona to buyer Persona is what KPIs are they measured on. If the building, you know, shuts down, goes to 97 degrees, you know, within the building, people aren’t going to call the marketing director, the HR director, they’re going to call the maintenance director.
Mark Hunter :
Why?
Becc Holland :
Because they, their KPIs are to run the building. So how someone’s entire role is governed is Simply put, their KPIs and there’s three types of them. There’s lagging, which is the final indicator that they’re hired and fired to drive. There’s leading, which are the inputs that they would change to hypothetically get there. And then there’s coincidental indicators. I call them leaning indicators, but they’re ones that they measure in real time to predict their performance according to the lagging indicator, but it’s not the lagging indicator itself. So like for marketing, for instance, SQLs would be the lagging indicator. A leading indicator could be the size of the ad or the channel they place it on.
Becc Holland :
And the coincidental indicators would be click through rate or you know, time that they spend on the website or conversion rate for people who click the form, you know. So if my click through rate’s too low, then I’m going to probably change the copy on the form. If my impression rate is too low, I’m probably going to change the channel. But I’m only going to change those if I’m behind on my SQL number. So I’m like, where you add it, you can talk with confidence or not with confidence. You can. People try to go after credibility and building rapport all the time. And I’m like, rapport is a French term which means to be brought back of like the buyer’s trying to solve problems, you’re trying to solve their problems too.
Becc Holland :
And how you do that is not by saying like, can you imagine you walk into a patient walks into a doctor’s office and they’re like, what can I get you today? And they’re like, well, I have this and you should give me these two medications. They’re like, okay, here’s a prescription. Like they have to ask a certain amount of questions because not because a person necessarily wants to get it wrong because they don’t have the expertise. So the good news about that is a lot of people say like, well, if I’m not an IT director, I’m not a full time HR professional, how on earth could I ever, especially in technical fields. And I’m like, well the good news is, I mean if I were sitting there listening to this, I would pause and say, do I know the average height, weight, bmi, you know, and blood pressure for my age and gender? The answer is typically I don’t. So I’m like, well that’s the good news. Just because you’re a human and have a body doesn’t mean you know everything about it or even the first thing about it or what’s wrong with it. So when you start to learn those KPIs, I’m like, honestly, if you were to focus on one of the two of like quote unquote, the sales craft, whatever that is, I’m like, you know, people say things like our job is to get everyone in the room to land on the, to agree on the problem to solve.
Becc Holland :
I’m like, good freaking luck. You’ve got sales enablement in there, you’ve got sales ops, you’ve got SDR and sales and they all have different KPIs. The problems they want to solve are only in relation to their KPIs. Now, the product might be the same, but what they’re going to use it for and to do and to accomplish and in what priority is according to their metrics. So the first thing that I would do before anything else is learn enough of those now in terms of the conversation and then I promise I’ll take a break because you asked the question of how do I earn the credibility? They’re going in with the mindset of like, you know, nothing. I mean, that’s their experience with salespeople is like, you know, nothing. Like, you know, that’s kind of the default of what they think. So I tried to very, very early on, even if, let’s say they believe something, they like in the network latency case, they believe something.
Becc Holland :
They’re like, oh, we’re all good on network latency. And I’m like, well, what is it? They’re like 185. And you’re like, okay, well, it’s not over 200 milliseconds, so it’s not a problem. I’d be like, interesting. I would still stick there. And I’d say interesting. And they’re like, what’s interesting? I’m like, well, industry average is below 100 and anything above 200 and it’s going to cause a 20 decrease in server uptime. So you’re not quite there yet.
Becc Holland :
But if you ever increase from 185 to where you are now to 200 in the future, I would like take a look and just that piece of value, I would do one as early as you can. It teaches them of like, oh, when I answer their questions, I get something from it. So I’m more apt to give you information and more apt to like go down that rabbit hole because it’s a cost to them when they give you that information. If they tell you their budget and internal buying circumstances and blah, blah, like you can just use that for leverage. Leverage, Leverage. They don’t want to you. They don’t want to expose any of their information. But if you do one early on like that they’re like, oh, piece of candy.
Becc Holland :
Now it’s not a done deal. Done deal. They’re impressed. But like, I would Try to at least do three within the discovery call. And that helps lower not only the status quo of them not thinking the problem is big enough. Because if you find three problems they didn’t know, it grows the size of the problem, but it also helps with the very haunting indecision of they do think the problem is big enough, but they don’t go for it anyway because they’re scared that they won’t get the outcome. You know. But if you find three things they didn’t know, all of a sudden they’re more sure that they can do it correctly and they’re more sure that you’re the partner that they should be sticking with to do it because you’ll catch that they won’t within the buying process.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, again, you unpacked a lot and I want to dive down deeper on this because again, of status quo, this is the biggest, I think the biggest problem salespeople encounter because they can’t earn enough stature to stay at the table long enough to be able to help the buyer.
Becc Holland :
Yeah.
Mark Hunter :
Reveal enough about their KPIs.
Becc Holland :
Yeah.
Mark Hunter :
Where do we go with that? Run with it.
Becc Holland :
You, you, you have to go early. I mean a tip that I always have is, is I would lay off the business problem in the beginning. So I associate business problem with lagging indicator. So everyone knows the business problem. The business problem is the lagging indicator goal minus lagging indicator achievement. Everyone knows their IT like they’re a goal internally for server up time and where they’re at. What they don’t know is what to change to fix it. So I, in the beginning I am rapid fire and you’ll get to know your buyer of like, okay, here are 40 KPIs that could be causing it.
Becc Holland :
Here are three that really cause they usually are struggling with and especially ones that they, you’ll get to know the ones that they didn’t know about. So a great example of this is email deliverability. Everyone talks about, you know, within the sales world and prospecting world. They’re like, it’s about quality, quality, quality, quality, quality. And I’m like, if you have a less than 50% open rate, which industry average is 15 to 25, you have an email deliverability problem, period. Only 59% of emails actually make it to the primary inbox. So instead of focusing on quality, if you were to focus on one, only focusing on email deliverability would be more paramount. Getting DKIM, DMARC, SPF, custom tracking links, not sending any more than 50 emails a day, making sure there’s zero links, less, fewer links, the better.
Becc Holland :
No same subject lines, no sending all at one time, no sending it equidistant times because it just tells the eyes, you know, the inbox service provider that you are a robot machine. So they’ll deliver less and less and less and less. That is happening with I would say 98% of programs, I would say about 99% of programs don’t know about it. So you’ll start to get to know those big whompers. So I would try to find one in the beginning. Even if it’s a stat on industry average. Oh, they’re about to hit a boiling point, whatever it is. And so they’re interested at that point, but they’re still not fully sold.
Becc Holland :
They’re like, maybe it’s one trick pony. But then as you start to ask for more KPIs, it’s, I think of it, you know, kind of like you have a first conversation. I hate dating analogies. I truly hate them. But it’s the best one that like comes to my mind. You can’t do anything on the first date to win marriage, quote, unquote. There’s a lot of things you could do to lose it of like, the conversation’s over, but there’s nothing you can do in that first conversation or that first five minutes to like, you know, like quote unquote, close the deal. If hypothetically you wanted to get married to the person.
Becc Holland :
So the first five minutes. What you can do though is you say something or something comes out that interests them to take a longer conversation. So I see the cold call as just that, that I’m like, once you get back past whatever permission based opener, which I’m like, it’s so funny to me. People harp on that all the time of like, you know, what’s the permission based opener? The time or the front part? I’m like, that is not where people. You lose them. You lose them in the questions afterwards when they start talking about do you have low blank or bad blank? I’m like, you can’t use any adjectives or adverbs because if, first of all, what’s low? Second of all, you know, they’re just going to give you the answer of what they think that is, which is not diagnostic information. You, you news. But the third is if you’re talking to people and you’re like, we work with people who struggle with blank, you have to keep in mind you’re going outbound.
Becc Holland :
So like, based on what they knew before the call, it wasn’t worth doing Something about whatever pain that they had wasn’t worth doing something about. So unless I find something new that based on what they knew beforehand, they weren’t going to move, but based on what they know now, it’s going to propel them into action, then you’re dead. So, like discovery, cold call. Regardless of the type of sale or conversation, the goal, the beautiful thing about it is marrying yourself to the buyer’s goal of their job. They’re, you know, trying to solve a problem. So marrying yourself to that of like, how can I find the most things that they didn’t know about so that their third. After this 30 minutes, they’re in a better spot than they were beforehand. That’s the thing that’s going to create more urgency, rush up the timeline, increase decision makers that they’re going to involve in the deal because they’re like, they have to meet this person because this person knows a lot about this subject and they think from a selfish perspective.
Becc Holland :
Even if we don’t buy, I’ll still learn a lot. And I’m like, that’s a great place to be, you know, So I. So the, the earlier you can find one, the better. But you need to be a, you know, an expert. And I. It is not hard. Meaning I’ve done it for probably 40 different buyer Personas because I wanted to give people that I was training examples in their terms of like, they’re like, some feedback I got early on is like, well, what does that mean for our buyer? We don’t sell to a salesperson or marketing person. So I’m like, okay.
Becc Holland :
So I wanted to codify it. I know. Which I’m like, well, asking me to do that, to change is like asking me to train. Change in or train in French one day, Italian the next, Spanish the next, German the next, polish the next. But I’m like, I have to figure out a way to do it because it’s valid. So if so, I literally run those tests, learn on the drive to the training as many KPIs as I can. And I walk. And I’m like, your buyer is an IT director.
Becc Holland :
Who in here knows the average backup success rate? Who in here knows the average storage availability? And then I’ll tell them, I’m like, average backup success rate is 90 plus. Anything below 82. And you typically is going to cause an increase in server downtime. Here’s my problem. That’s how your buyer is measured. And the only reason I do know those is I learned them on the drive here. And if your competitor does that to you, you will lose every single deal. They’re not worried about is it the right pill.
Becc Holland :
They’re worried about is it the right problem to be solving and are they going about it in the right way? So I, you know, I would encourage people of like, the more that you can learn those statistics, I’m like, the technique will take a backseat of like, I, I have to go about the conversation of like, I need to ask as many questions that I can. A good question is one that nails out a lot of options in terms of diagnosis and finds a whomper that they didn’t know. Like, the deal closes itself. Wow.
Mark Hunter :
We have just had a master class from Beck Holland. It’s unbelievable because again, you got to do the homework before you have the conversation and what you shared. Incredible. And focusing in on that KPI, I’m going to encourage everybody to go back and listen to this thing again. Beck, how do people get in touch with you?
Becc Holland :
Yeah. So. Well, if you go to flipthescript.com and you click on Free Sales Training Hub and go to season four, there’s a 22 sessions on just selling it. Like it’s selling in specific around diagnostic. Selling is what I call it. And it’s two and a half hour episodes all with the deck, all for free. So if you want to learn more about that topic, then you can go to flipthescript.com and click on free sales training hub. And it’s season four that focuses on sales.
Mark Hunter :
That’s what I love about you because you give and you give and you give because you’re on a mission to get sales to the level that it needs to be. And it’s. And it has not. It’s never been. And that’s what you’re on the mission of. Thank you for joining us. Hey, you’ve been listening to, you’ve been listening to the Sales Hunter podcast. It’s two episodes a week, one like this, where we do a deep dive with a subject matter expert.
Becc Holland :
I’d say say Beck kind of hits
Mark Hunter :
that hits that 1/2 one is just me with a single topic. Why do the show? It’s to help you see and achieve what you didn’t think was possible. Do me a favor, leave me a review on your favorite podcast app, would you? And I’ll catch you on the next show. Thanks so much for listening. Thanks so much for watching Mark Hunter.
