The document describes a framework for conducting customer-centric discovery. It involves 4 stages: KNOW, BE, CONNECT, and CREATE. In KNOW, salespeople analyze the customer's industry, corporate goals and initiatives, and key contacts. In BE, they learn about the experience of the customer's employees, customers, and value chain. In CONNECT, salespeople share insights about the customer, visualize their current reality, and co-create a vision. In CREATE, they develop a case for change, storyboard potential solutions, and create a mutual plan. The goal is to understand customers deeply, connect authentically, and collaboratively develop solutions that meet their needs and priorities.

1. Customer Centric Discovery
Discovery the Salesforce Way
Michael Scherbaum
Sr. Mgr., Partner Field Development
mscherbaum@salesforce.com

2. Vision
Every customer or prospect touched by Salesforce
will feel respected, valued and understood.
They will learn from us as we learn from them,
going well beyond just a vendor relationship.
We are customer connected.

3. 3
Customer Centric Discovery
Use the best analytics to get smart
about your customer’s industry,
org, roles and pain points.
Put yourself in your customer’s
shoes, and your customer’s
customer’s shoes. Understand
their value chain and be curious.
Build a storyboard and mutual plan
with your client to address their
priorities.
Share your insights, understand
their perspective and co-create a
vision.

4. The Customer Centric Discovery Framework
KNOW
3 Areas to Analyze
• Industry: trends & POV
• Corporate: goals, pressures,
obstacles, initiatives
• Contact/Buyer: interests & goals
By working smart, this analysis
allows us to connect with our
customers in their language,
identify what they care about and
build credibility.
BE
3 Things to Learn
• The work experience of your
customer’s employees
• The emotional experience of being
your customer’s customer
• Your customers’ entire value chain
By putting ourselves in the shoes
of our customer, it prepares us to
have an authentic conversation,
establish a deeper connection,
discover unmet needs, be more
creative in our solutions and build
trust.
CONNECT
3 Ways to Connect
• Share your insights to gain your
customer’s perspective
• Visualize the customer’s current
reality
• Co-create a vision
Collaborating with our customers
to create a vision and share
perspective develops an
environment where they feel more
invested in building a solution with
us. We are earning the right to
present while turning the tables on
a traditional sales approach.
CREATE
3 Things to Create
• Case for change
• Storyboard Lite
• Mutual plan
By co-creating a plan that helps
our customers achieve their vision
we are capable of modifying our
assumptions and building a unique
solution that is often more valuable
to both of us than we assumed.
4

5. The Customer Centric Discovery Framework
Move to BE when you can speak confidently about the client’s universe, have formed a few strategic questions,
and are starting to draw conclusions about patterns or trends.
KNOW
Roll up your sleeves and dig in. You are on a hunt to find:
INDUSTRY:
• Trends
• Innovations
• How does the industry communicate? E.g. industry publications, twitter, conferences (has implication for how Salesforce would accommodate them)
• SF Success cases from same industry
CORPORATION
If the company is public, see resources below, if company is private, find public competitor and research them to derive insights about your client
• Strategic objectives (KPI’s)
• Vision
• Business challenges
• High level financial performance
• Future areas of focus and investment
• Large acquisitions
• Outlook for coming fiscal year
• Business segments
• M&A history
• Geographic locations
• Key executives
• Key competitors
CONTACT
• Key responsibilities and areas of focus
• Business challenges
• Executive compensation structure
• Executive performance KPIs and targets
By working smart, this
analysis allows us to
connect with our
customers in their
language, identify what
they care about and build
credibility.
3 Areas to Analyze
• Industry: trends & POV
• Corporate: goals,
pressures, obstacles,
initiatives
• Contact/Buyer: interests &
goals
RESOURCES
Industry Research
• Salesforce.com/industries
• Internal Chatter groups (i.e. Industries - Media)
• Pono.secure.force.com (7 industries)
Corporate Research
• Internal tools - e.g. Org62, Black Tab, Data.com, Value Market Research
team (Chatter Group), Wave Analytics (Account WAVE for AE’s)
• Internet tools – e.g. Google, Owler.com, Seeking Alpha, Chairman’s Letter
to Shareholders (Annual Report)
Roles
• Buyer profile- go to Org62 type in “Buyer Profile”
• Proxy Statement

6. KNOW | Industry: trends & challenges
6
• What are the biggest
external drivers and
challenges in the
industry?
• How does this affect
how they are connecting
with their customers?
• Industry reports: PwC, Deloitte, E&Y
• Letter to the Shareholders
• Investor presentations (Find on
investor relations of the co website)

7. KNOW | Corporate: goals, pressures, obstacles, initiatives
7
• Earnings transcript
• Letter to Shareholders
• 10-Q/10-k
• Seekingalpha.com
• Morningstar.com
• What are their strategic priorities?
• What are their business segments and
which are doing the best and which are not?
• What are their challenges and where may
they divest?
• Are they growing? If so, how?
• Geography- what is the source of their
growth from a geo stand point?
• How do they make money?
• Who are top executives?

8. KNOW | Contact/Buyer: interests & goals
8
• What are they focused on? What do
they care about?
• What part of the company’s
imperatives fall into their
responsibility?
• What are the pain points that are
getting in their way?
• Buyer Profiles
• LinkedIn
• Google
• Proxy Statement
Start with persona based
profile and then balance
with what is real for that
person.

9. Move to CONNECT when you have an interesting story or insight to share about your customer’s world.
BE
Do you want to buy from someone who you don’t feel cares about you nor can relate to your needs and interests? If you had a choice, probably not. You will
change the nature of the conversation with your customer when you tell authentic stories about your client. When you engage in this step, you are looking for
what people care about, what surprises you and hacks and work-arounds. (A hack is something one does to get around a current system to make it work for
them. For example, using Evernote instead of Salesforce. This signifies a need.)
Customer’s Employees
• Interview someone who works at the customer site – ask them about their experience, keep asking “why?” in a genuine way to find out about
people’s interests or needs.
• Look at GlassDoor.com, as one example.
Customer’s Customer
• Physically go to the customer site – look around, ask someone to show you what they do, be a customer, experience what is like use their product
or service and develop your own story. Talk to a real customer.
• Go to their website and act as a customer – join their loyalty program, look at social media, call the help line
• Find Customer Satisfaction reports or social media commentary
Value Chain
• Map out the value chain of your customer. A value chain indicates each provider/business that is connected from production to the eventual
end-user (final buyer). Some value chains are complex, others are simple. Your task is to understand more fully who contributes to the end
customer being satisfied and where their interests lie.
Be creative. There are many other ways to learn about your customer.
By putting ourselves in the shoes of
our customer, it prepares us to
have an authentic conversation,
establish a deeper connection,
discover unmet needs, be more
creative in our solutions and build
trust.
9
3 Things to Learn
• The work experience of your
customer’s employees
• The emotional experience of being your
customer’s customer
• Your customers’ entire value chain
The Customer Centric Discovery Framework

10. BE | Your Customers on-the-ground reality
10

11. BE | The emotional experience of being your customer’s
customer
11

12. BE | Be an Expert Observer
12

13. Move to CREATE when you have a genuine connection with your client, a clear understanding
of their priorities and a sense of how Salesforce may be able to solve a top issue.
CONNECT
Remember, no one wants to go on a date with someone who only talks about themselves. Create a plan for a collaborative conversation with
your client/contact that includes all or some of the following. This may be one or several conversations.
• Insights: Share a reflection of what you discovered in KNOW and BE as a conversation starter – highlight what you found interesting,
perhaps a disconnect, what was surprising, or where value was lost or gained. “I talked to the distributor that sells your product and they
were unable to segment who the various buyers were of your products.”
• Visualize: Co-create a visual with them of their corporate objectives, tactics, decision makers, and barriers. This can be done by
whiteboarding or live note sharing. Your intention is to involve them in sharing what is important to them and the company.
• Inquire about the impact on the business if priorities are not met.
• Discuss their values, vision, plans, objectives, and how they measure success (V2MOM).
• Co-create a vision of success; ”What if this challenge was solved? What would it look like?”
• Share relevant Salesforce customer success stories.
3 Ways to Connect
• Share your insights to gain your
customer’s perspective
• Visualize the customer’s current reality
• Co-create a vision
Collaborating with our customers to
create a vision and share perspective
develops an environment where they
feel more invested in building a
solution with us. We are earning the
right to present, while turning the
tables on a traditional sales approach.
• Get a list of priorities with your client
• Inquire about them- what’s missing?
• Determine top priorities – those they or org can’t live without
addressing
• Start with #1- understand what the challenge is, what is impact
on business what is getting in way of solving?
• Keep asking Why…
• Go to priority #2
• End by creating a vision with our customer of one or more
challenges solved
Didn’t do KNOW and BE? Are you kidding??
But, we know it happens…so here is how to
start.
The Customer Centric Discovery Framework

14. CONNECT | Identify your insights
14
I was in CVS recently
and learned that many
women are confused as
to which razor to
purchase for a male
because there is are so
many options and little
education in the aisle.

15. CONNECT | Visualize the customer’s current reality
15
Ask your customer one or more:
• To describe their organization to
you: divisions, segments,
geographies
• To articulate the top business:
priorities, barriers or enablers to
achieving them and intended
outcomes
• To talk through their organizational
structure
Capture what you hear on a board
in a virtual format that you both can
see.

16. Although Discovery never ends, the next stage in this process is Development
and is dependent on the context of your opportunity.
CREATE
3 Things to Create
• Case for Change
• Storyboard Lite
• Mutual plan
By co-creating a plan that helps
our customer achieve their vision
we are capable of modifying our
assumptions and building a unique
solution that is often more valuable
to both of us than we assumed.
There are a number of ways to create a draft solution for feedback from your customer. You might do all of these below, or just one. You
choose based on the context.
• Case for Change: create a case for change to check your understanding of their business challenge and to help your customer understand
the impact of solving or not solving their issue. This is also an opportunity to start to link what Salesforce has to offer with your client’s
business priority. Depending on the scope of your opportunity, this may be a statement, a business case, or a value hypothesis.
• “We understand your objective is to increase revenue in the XYZ business unit through greater customer acquisition, and that if you
don’t, there will be an impact on your bottom line. Am I correct? If so, I believe we could work together to achieve your goal.”
• Storyboard: Create a storyboard with your internal team of the solution you want to present to your customers that solves one of their key
business challenges. A storyboard is a visual reflection of what happens if that challenge is solved for the customer and their customer(s).
Perhaps multiple steps in the value chain are represented. Presenters who use visual aids are 43% more effective in persuading audience
members to take a desired course of action. http://billiondollargraphics.com/infographics.html
• Mutual Plan: Create a mutual plan for how you will move forward together. This is likely to include, identification of key decision makers,
budget, timing, milestones/deliverables and next steps.
16
The Customer Centric Discovery Framework

17. CREATE | Storyboard Lite- Draw It!
17

18. CREATE | Mutual Plan
18
Identify:
• Where to start in the organization
• Who else needs to be involved
• What is the timeframe
• Who are the Decision makers
• What is the Budget
• What is the procurement process
• Our next steps
• …….
• …….
• …….

19. thank y u