1 min lesson
Find the compelling event and the timeline
Use the lesson to answer "Ask the timeline directly: If the evaluation goes well, when would you want the team fully onboarded?" Keep the practical reason clear.
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.
- Compelling events for an eng org: a hiring freeze forcing more output per head, a big launch with a hard date, a budget cycle closing or a competing tool's renewal coming due.
- Ask the timeline directly: "If the evaluation goes well, when would you want the team fully onboarded?" Work backward from that date.
- No compelling event means the deal is real but slow. Forecast it honestly as later-stage pipeline, not this quarter's commit.
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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.
- 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, not your champion
- Blockers
- Security and Legal reviewers who can stall on data/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 - write it in their words
An org you haven't mapped is a deal you can't forecast.
Never end a discovery call without a concrete next step on the calendar. "I'll follow up" is how velocity dies. Book the eval kickoff, the security intro or the exec readout before you hang up - discovery without a scheduled next step is a wasted call.
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Optional practice