The Curiosity Deficit

How curious are you?

During a recent diagnostic engagement with a mid-market SaaS company, we found their reps couldn't gain access to senior stakeholders. Conversations stayed with operational contacts, deals stalled at evaluation stages, and discovery remained at surface-level qualification.

When we examined their discovery approach and reviewed deal progression patterns, the issue became clear: their questions gathered requirements without creating insight. They followed predictable qualification frameworks or preset questions that never elevated the conversation or changed how prospects thought about their challenges and indeed how they should be looking at the challenge on a day-by-day basis.

The reps could articulate features confidently, maintain some levels of pipeline discipline, and execute their question set competently. But they couldn't get higher in their accounts and you could argue became and episodic commodity.

The Qualifying Question Trap

Here's what a typical conversation sounded like:

"What challenges are you facing with your current solution?"

"What's your budget for addressing this?" "What's your timeline for making a decision?" "Who else needs to be involved?"

These aren't bad questions. They're necessary. Every sales methodology teaches them in some form.

But they gather information. They don't create insight.

Prospects answered dutifully. Deals progressed to later stages. They stall, get compressed on price, or disappear with "we've decided to stick with what we have."

Why? The sales conversations hadn't changed how prospects thought about their problems.

What Genuine Curiosity Sounds Like

Contrast those qualifying questions with what we heard in successful conversations:

"What happens to your business if this doesn't get solved in the next 12 months?" "When you say you need 'better reporting,' what specific decision are you trying to make that you can't make today?" "What's the board actually measuring you against, beyond these immediate operational metrics?"

These questions invite deeper thinking. They surface assumptions. They connect tactical problems to strategic objectives.

This is curiosity as a commercial capability, not just a personality trait.

Despite following standard sales frameworks/question sets, this team had never actually developed genuine curiosity. They'd been taught to qualify, to present, to handle objections. Nobody had taught them to think...

The Pattern We Keep Seeing

Our diagnostic revealed measurable patterns:

Conversation depth: Most discovery conversations lasted 15-20 minutes before transitioning to presentation. Successful conversations should average 35-40 minutes of pure discovery, often without presenting at all initially.

Question sophistication: Typical conversations featured 8-12 questions from the rep. High-performing conversations averaged 22-28 questions, many diving deeper into previous answers.

Stakeholder engagement: Standard qualification identified 2-3 stakeholders. Curious discovery uncovered 4-6, including individuals not initially flagged.

Deal progression: Opportunities with superficial discovery showed 80%+ longer sales cycles and 40%+ higher discount rates. Without proper business case development, everything defaulted to price negotiation and how they could get the deal closed.

This wasn't about effort or motivation. The reps were working hard, following their training, executing their methodology. They were optimising for the wrong outcome.

The System Behind the Problem

The curiosity deficit wasn't primarily a people problem. It was a systems problem.

Our diagnostic work consistently shows that commercial underperformance splits roughly 60% system failures and 40% capability gaps.

In this case:

Compensation structures rewarded activity and stage progression, not conversation quality. Reps spending 40 minutes in discovery were penalised relative to those who moved quickly to presentation.

Account structures allocated opportunities based on geography rather than buyer complexity, meaning reps encountered varying stakeholder sophistication without corresponding support.

Enablement programmes focused on product knowledge and standard frameworks. Curiosity wasn't taught because curiosity wasn't valued as a distinct capability.

Performance expectations created pressure to "get to the demo" quickly, inadvertently encouraging reps to shortcut the discovery that would make presentations effective.

The team was getting precisely the behaviour the system incentivised.

Why Frameworks Alone Don't Fix This

Most sales frameworks assume curiosity will emerge naturally if you give people a question structure.

It doesn't.

Frameworks provide structure. They don't create curiosity.

Genuine curiosity requires different development: question sophistication, active listening, adaptive thinking, intellectual honesty, interest in the prospect's situation beyond how it relates to your sale.

This is rarely taught as a distinct capability. It's assumed. And that assumption is where curiosity deficit originates.

The Diagnostic Imperative

This is why we begin transformation engagements with forensic diagnosis rather than jumping to solutions.

Opinion-based consulting starts with assumptions: "You need better qualification training." "Your team lacks discovery skills."

Evidence-based consulting starts with investigation: What's actually happening in conversations? Where are deals stalling and why? What patterns distinguish success from failure? What systemic factors shape behaviour?

Our Curiosity Deficit Diagnostic framework emerged from these patterns observed across our consulting work. It assesses curiosity as a commercial capability across three dimensions:

Conversation Patterns: Question sophistication, listening effectiveness, adaptive discovery, insight generation through dialogue.

Discovery Outcomes: Stakeholder understanding depth, challenge exploration, mutual value creation, relationship strength.

Organisational Enablers: How processes, structures, incentives, and leadership practices support or constrain curiosity.

By measuring across these dimensions, we can quantify curiosity deficit, benchmark against high-performing patterns, and develop targeted transformation strategies addressing both individual capability and systemic design.

Uncomfortable but true

If curiosity deficit exists in one organisation, it probably exists in yours too.

Most organisations sense their sales conversations could be deeper. They observe deals stalling unexpectedly. They see price pressure that shouldn't exist given their differentiation.

But they're operating on intuition rather than evidence.

What would change if you could quantify your curiosity deficit? If you knew precisely which dimensions needed attention? If you understood the specific systemic factors constraining discovery effectiveness?

That's what diagnostic rigour provides: the foundation for evidence-based transformation rather than opinion-based tinkering.

The organisations that will pull ahead in 2026 aren't necessarily the ones with the best products or largest sales teams. They're the ones asking better questions, uncovering deeper insights, and creating more value through their conversations.

Because curiosity isn't automatic. It's developed. And like all capabilities worth developing, it starts with honest assessment of where you stand today.

Ready to understand your curiosity deficit? We begin all transformation engagements with diagnostic assessment. Let's start a conversation about what forensic analysis might reveal about your commercial capabilities. Contact us @ info@kaizen-one.co.uk

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Kaizen-One is a specialist commercial transformation consultancy working with SaaS leadership teams globally. We combine forensic diagnostics with systematic transformation, helping organisations achieve measurable performance improvements through evidence-based approaches.