1 min lesson
Find the compelling event and the timeline
Say what this means in practice. "Ask the timeline directly: 'If the evaluation goes well, when would you want the team fully onboarded'?"
Step 1 of 3
Find the compelling event and the timeline
A deal without a reason to act now drifts. Early in discovery, surface what makes this quarter different and when a decision has to land.
Ask the timeline directly: "If the evaluation goes well, when would you want the team fully onboarded?" Then work backward from that date.
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Full explanation
Map the org while you're in there
Map the org while you're in there
Discovery is also reconnaissance. By the end of the first real call you should know who feels the pain, who pays and who can quietly kill the deal in a Slack thread you'll never see.
What to leave the call knowing
- Champion
- The dev or EM who loves Cursor and will sell internally when you're not there
- Economic buyer
- Who actually controls the budget, often a VP Eng or CTO and not your champion
- Blockers
- Security and Legal reviewers who can stall on data and IP handling for weeks
- Procurement path
- Whether this goes through a vendor review and how long that usually takes
- Decision criteria
- What they'd have to see in an eval to say yes, written in their words
An org you haven't mapped is a deal you can't forecast.
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Optional practice