Doing Discovery

What the book is about

Doing Discovery: The Single Most Important Element of Software Sales and Buyer Enablement Processes is by Peter Cohan, founder of The Second Derivative and author of the Great Demo! method. Cohan defines discovery as the process of collecting information that enables a precise proposal of a solution to a prospect's problem. His argument is simple: the vendor the customer sees as doing the best job of discovery is in a stronger position than everyone else.

What it covers

• Critical business issues. The book centres discovery on the business problems that matter to the people who pay, not just the technical symptoms people mention first. It encourages you to research likely issues before the call, so discovery becomes confirming and deepening what you expect.
• A skill-level framework. The author's site describes seven proficiency levels for discovery, from uncovering basic pain to quantifying it and reshaping how the customer sees the solution. The site notes that most sales teams operate at the lower levels, which leaves a lot of room to improve.
• Exercises. The book includes exercises to build the skill deliberately rather than by accident.

Why it matters for customer-facing engineers

Discovery is the skill that most separates strong forward deployed, solutions and sales engineers from average ones, and it is rarely taught to engineers at all. A build, demo or proof of concept aimed at the wrong problem wastes weeks regardless of how good the engineering is. This book gives you a structured way to get better at the conversation that comes before all of that.

Is it worth it?

If you are aiming at solutions or sales engineering, yes: it is one of the few books entirely about discovery in software sales. For forward deployed engineering, the ideas apply to every new workstream at a customer, even though the examples lean towards sales.

How long it takes

A few evenings to read. The real value comes from using the framework in practice calls afterwards, recording them and checking which level you reached.

Prerequisites

None. It helps to have seen or taken part in a sales or customer conversation, even a practice one.

Formats

The author's site lists paperback, Kindle and audiobook versions, and an Italian translation. It reports more than 9,500 copies purchased, including over 2,200 audiobooks.

Common questions

How is it different from Great Demo!? Great Demo! is about preparing and giving demonstrations. Doing Discovery is about the conversations before the demo, which decide what the demo should show.

Best for: engineers who want a structured, practical way to get better at discovery calls.