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As a Consultant or Salesforce Administrator you will engage in a Discovery meeting at some point.

What is a Discovery?

When I first heard of a Discovery I thought that it was a fancy thing that happens in Court Trials. I quickly realized that it was something that I was doing as a Salesforce Administrator the whole time.

A Discovery is a set time or multiple times that you meet and learn or “Discover” requirements for a project. From the Salesforce perspective it could be a new project to implement Service Cloud for a Customer Support Department or a request from a Manager to build out a new Sales Dashboard. The below tips are a few things to consider when approaching a Discovery.

Tip 1 – Be Prepared

It is important to know what products you are implementing or working on before the first call. Review any SOW (statement of work) before the call and start a question outline. A Discovery outline will help facilitate questions to ask, and you can boil down the sections into an agenda to send to the customer before the meeting.

Tip 2 – Ask the Big Question

One of the first questions that should be added to your discussion items is the Big Question.

This is simply:

“What pain point are you trying to solve?”

“If you woke up tomorrow and this project was completed, what would be solved?”

These questions will help set the main goal, theme, apex, guiding post, and purpose of the project. Once you know this in the discovery always keep this in mind to find ways to point all work towards this resolution. Just like your ending destination on google maps this will be a point to drive towards.

Tip 3 – Take Notes

It is very important to take notes during these Discovery meetings. The outline that you created from tip 1 could be used to also add the answers underneath your questions. If possible recording the call if it is on a zoom, gotomeeting, or virtual meeting will be great for everyone involved to reference anything that maybe you did not jot down fast enough.

These notes that are taken could be used in the future to define requirement documentation, additional statements of work, and Solution Design documents. Just like taking notes in school if someone says “this is important” or “a nice to have” then these are key items to notate for the project.

Not everything will be relevant that is discussed on a call but the notes taken on the calls will be valuable to determine the relevance.

Tip 4 – Vocabulary

Salesforce has its own language in many aspects. For example:

Objects, Opportunities, Organization, Users, Profiles, etc.

Many times the people you are with you in the Discovery meetings have never seen Salesforce or may not be familiar with these terms. It is important to translate these terms into business terms that make sense to the others. Examples:

Instead of Object use “Records”

Instead of Opportunities use “Sales”

Also be active listening for terms that the business may use. Acronyms are a great example of term that you should ask for clarification on if not immediately known. Understanding business terms is critical to ensuring the implementation is aligned to meet the business need.