LinkedIn·Monday, 3 August 2026·23d ago

I wonder... Everyone in B2B sales is obsessed with the top of the funnel. More leads. More meetings. More pipeline. I think we're fixing…

Geoffrey Smolders

Activating DATA+AI.

I wonder... Everyone in B2B sales is obsessed with the top of the funnel. More leads. More meetings. More pipeline. I think we're fixing the wrong thing. Cold lead gen is a volume problem. Noisy and painful, but solvable. You can always buy more of it. Discovery is different. It's where deals are actually won or lost. And almost nobody does it well. The best rep on your team asks at least 10-15 questions in a discovery call. The average rep asks maybe 2-3. That gap is the difference between a forecast you trust and one you just hope for. Almost none of it gets written down. Calls get recorded, transscripts barely move into CRM systems. The reason a deal moves lives in one person's head. The buyer's politics. The unspoken objection. The thing they said off the record. That watercooler conversation or that 5 mins talk when you walk out their offices... We pour budget into filling the pipe. We spend almost nothing on understanding what's already in it. More leads won't save a team that can't run discovery. It just means more deals lost slightly later. So I wonder, I am the only one with this thought? In your business, is weak discovery costing you more than a thin pipeline? Be honest. #B2BSales #SalesStrategy #Discovery #MondayQuestion

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