Research, AI and Better Discovery

~ Guest blog by Richard Bounds - an inspir'em coach & trainer.

Any seller who is not embracing AI to gain better insights, increase productivity, or improve forecasting won’t be replaced by AI, but they will get left behind by those who do!

At its core, your job as a seller is to help the customer buy. If you don’t understand them - their pressures, priorities, and success measures, you’re simply not doing your job.

Discovery is the key to being an impactful and successful seller, now more than ever. This blog examines how AI can help sellers deepen discovery, align to real buyer priorities, and make better decisions throughout the deal.

Jump to section: 

• Research and How AI Can Help
• 7 Tips for Enhancing your AI-Powered Research
• AI and MEDDPICC in Execution
• Next Steps
• Example Prompt for AI Conversation Analysis

Research and How AI Can Help

Most discovery issues don’t happen in the meeting; they happen before the meeting. There’s no magic shortcut here, and I’m not advocating AI replacing proper research, but AI can absolutely supplement it and provide deeper analysis than most sellers have had access to before now.

This is where AI is starting to make a real difference. Better research leads to better questions, clearer hypotheses, and a stronger understanding of customer priorities. When that insight is combined with disciplined execution of a methodology like MEDDPICC, sellers show up better prepared and able to use their curiosity, experience, and personal approach to run more focused, relevant, and valuable discovery conversations.

Used properly, AI helps sellers arrive at meetings with a point of view. Instead of relying on surface-level information, sellers can understand likely business pressures, role-specific priorities, and early signals of whether an account fits their ideal customer profile (ICP). When you bring an informed opinion, you deliver value before you ever talk about your product.

7 Tips for Enhancing your AI-Powered Research

1. Start with a Question, not a Prompt. Before typing anything into AI, decide what you’re trying to learn. For example:

• What business problem might this company be prioritising this year?
• Where could challenges in revenue, cost or risk show up for this persona/role?

This ensures AI supports your hypothesis, rather than replacing it.

2. Use AI to Summarise the Data. Some of the best insights come from company-owned materials. AI is excellent at finding the key points. Ask it to summarise from:

• Annual reports and investor presentations
• Earnings calls and CEO letters
• Blog posts and press releases

For example: “Summarise the top three strategic priorities from this company’s latest annual report and explain how they might affect the IT function.”

AI ca now create a nice Value Pyramid summary for you to use in your customer meetings.

3. Hunt for Tension. Sellers often focus on acquisitions or growth announcements. But real personal wins usually sit in areas of tension. Ask AI to identify:

• Repeated mentions of “challenges” or “transformation”
• Shifts in language year-on-year
• Outcomes that are promised but not yet delivered

I’ve seen this first-hand with SquaredUp: companies moving to the cloud struggling with spiralling costs, or recurring downtime, driving the need for better monitoring and visibility.

When you understand these pains before the meeting, you can offer help, not a pitch.

4. Research the Role. Good discovery is specific to the individual and their role, e.g.

• Summarising typical KPIs and pressures for a given role.
• Translating company strategy into likely personal priorities.

In complex enterprise deals, sellers may need to engage with 10–12 stakeholders. These insights help you tailor the conversation for each individual.

5. Build Hypothesis. AI helps generate testable assumptions. For example:

“It looks like cost control is a priority. Is that number one for you this year, or is something else more pressing?”

That mindset helps to keep discovery honest and collaborative.

6. Focus on Metrics, Not Just Insights. AI is particularly strong at finding explicit numbers e.g. cost targets, growth rates and surface level agreements (SLAs).

This can bring MEDDPICC to life by grounding conversations in measurable outcomes or to give some testable assumptions.

7. Use external comparisons. Finally, go beyond internal documents, compare priorities against peers or industry benchmarks.

Customers meet with vendors to hear their insights - be ready to share.

Download the inspir’em Discovery e-book

Take a deep-dive into how to lay strong foundations for every deal and optimise your chances of success, quarter-in, quarter-out with our Discovery e-book.

Download your copy here

*inspir’em Leader members, you can find this template in your member library

AI and MEDDPICC in Execution

Someone said a great phrase recently: the “three truths” of every sales meeting:

1. What really happened
2. What the AE thinks happened
3. What the AE tells their manager

That may be cynical, but AI and modern conversation intelligence tools are keeping us honest and consistent. Call recordings, meeting summaries, and sentiment analysis allow sellers and managers to review what was said, capture key moments, and check whether problems and priorities were truly understood.

Since starting my own consulting business and partnering with inspir’em, conversation intelligence with AI has been a genuine game changer in improving forecast accuracy, surfacing risk, and ensuring focus on the right opportunities. And I don’t use the game changer phrase too often! 

AI driven MEDDPICC scorecards, automated CRM notes, deal-level insights, and suggested next actions. I’ve used it from day one to benchmark MEDDPICC adoption and ensure coaching sticks.

That’s not AI being clever.
That’s AI supporting better judgement.

Next Steps

Hopefully some of this resonates. Rather than read it and agree, try a couple of these ideas and let us know how you get on:

1. Hypothesis
   For an upcoming call, use AI to identify one likely business priority or pain point. Frame it as a hypothesis, not a statement:
   “Based on the latest annual report and peer comparison IT cost control seems to be a focus for this FY, where does that sit as a priority for you?”
   Validate don’t assume.
2. Spot Deal Risks
   Run a recent call transcript or meeting summary through AI for a quick MEDDPICC-style review, then use these to guide your next discussion. (See prompt below, or look at tools available to support you).
3. Benchmark Against Peers
   Compare one account or deal against similar companies using AI or public data. Highlight differences in priorities, investment, or outcomes, and validate with the customer:
   "We’ve seen similar organizations prioritise X — how does that compare for you?"

This blog is one of our Discovery series. These blogs are accompanied by our newsletter and a live webinar.

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