How to do discovery

Discovery

The discovery mindset

Discovery isn’t walking through every PostHog feature. It’s having real conversations with customers to figure out if PostHog will be a good fit for them. Learn their problems, see how they solve things today, and find the people who’ll get excited enough to bring us in.

This is meant to be a guide, not a rule-set. Each person has their own unique style. The goal here is to surface the right insights by providing a framework for how to go about _asking the right questions_ vs. a talk-track for how to run discussions with customers.

Core principles:

• Curiosity over pitching - Be genuinely interested in their challenges
• Find the pain - People buy solutions to problems, not features
• Identify champions - Someone needs to sell internally when you're not there

Discovery isn't one-sided questioning - it's give and take. You learn something, you show something, you ask questions, repeat. The goal is understanding what customers are trying to accomplish so we can focus on relevant features rather than discussing everything PostHog can do.

Why discovery matters

PostHog is a broad product suite with common combinations depending on the use case. Discovery can help us provide customers with a better experience by understanding their specific needs so we can:

• Conduct a demo that actually matters - No one wants to sit through features they'll never use
• Draw connections between their problems and our products - There are 10+ products (and counting), we want to help them find the right combination
• Skip the irrelevant stuff and get to the good bits - Customers' time is valuable, and generic sales calls aren't
• Reduce time & effort needed for them to make a confident decision - By understanding requirements upfront, we can address concerns early and focus on what matters most to stakeholders

Timeline

We don't need to cram every question into the first call. Discovery is always happening and we have many customers who stay with us long term. Use each touchpoint to learn something new.

Other channels

Beyond the 1st call, there are other spaces where we frequently communicate with customers:

• Zoom / Phone
• Email
• Shared Slack channel
• DMs in Slack / LinkedIn / X
• Text / SMS

Most customers are preferential towards Slack while others like email/Zoom. Slack is central to communications at PostHog and tends to be a great place to offer real-time support and ask questions.

Before your 1st call

Prep work

Discovery includes preparation. Before speaking with any new customer interested in engaging further with PostHog, it's helpful to gather some basic knowledge to help with demoing relevant features and determining if it's a good fit.

Examples:

• Learn more about our ICP
• Cross-reference Vitally, PostHog, Slack and Salesforce for any prior engagement or current activity/status
• Learn more about who you're speaking with via LinkedIn/X
• Visit the company's website, learn about their product, who they are marketing/selling to, language they are using. Familiarize yourself with what may be important to them
• Use ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, etc. to help research the company, their industry, macroeconomic factors and potential use cases for PostHog

Asking questions

Discovery is about understanding the real problem through natural conversation. The goal is to be genuinely curious about their situation, not to interrogate them.

Question principles:

• Use "what" and "how" to signal curiosity rather than judgment
• Start questions with "tell me...", "explain to me...", or "describe to me..." to avoid yes/no answers
• Focus on understanding their current state and challenges
• Ask about consequences and impact naturally as the conversation flows

Understanding customer goals

Instead of asking about room for more PostHog products, ask about what the customer is trying to accomplish. Questions like "what's coming up in your roadmap over the next few months?" get better intel without feeling like an upsell and it's just generally a much more natural conversation.

When you understand their goals, you can frame PostHog around outcomes instead of features. For example, if you learn they're launching a jobs board and their GTM leans on niche SEO, you can shape the demo around using web analytics to nail that launch. You're telling a story where PostHog helps them succeed, not just showing what buttons do.

Goal-discovery questions:

• "What's coming up in your product roadmap over the next few months?"
• "What's the biggest thing your team is trying to accomplish this quarter?"
• "What does success look like for your team right now?"
• "What's keeping you up at night with work?" (only if you have genuine rapport)

When to use these:

• In prep — research their roadmap, recent launches, and blog posts beforehand, then confirm on the call
• During discovery — weave into the opening conversation naturally
• At the end of a call — as a lightweight follow-up: "before we wrap, anything big coming up I should know about?"
• In follow-up comms — as part of a warm intro or handoff (e.g. TAM introducing to the engineering team)

Important: This only works if you're genuinely curious. It's not a checklist item for every call — forced interest is gross and salesy. But when the connection is there, it's a much better place to frame what we offer from.

What makes PostHog different

The demo

Demoing PostHog is an important part of our sales process and how we first introduce PostHog to customers. It brings immediate value to a call, is consistent with other messaging and builds credibility with technical folks.

A demo can also be a great format where questions bubble naturally.

Principles:

• Leverage PostHog's technical credibility by showing vs. telling
• Uses the demo as a conversation starter rather than a monologue
• Be adaptable

Examples:

• Demo of Product Analytics: _Showing a funnel analysis_
• Questions: "Is there a conversion flow you're currently struggling to understand?"
• Demo of Session Replay: _Showing user session with errors_
• Questions: "How do you know if users are struggling with your product?"
• Demo of Web Analytics: _Showing UTM sources breakdown_
• Questions: "How are you currently attributing conversions across channels?"
• Demo of Autocapture: _Showing retroactive insight creation_
• Questions: "How much dev time do you currently spend on instrumentation?"
• Demo of Data pipelines: _Showing how to create a destination_
• Questions: "Is there anywhere you'd ideally like to send data back out to?"
• Demo of Error Tracking: _Showing error dashboard_
• Questions: "How are you prioritizing bugs to fix first?"
• Demo of Data warehouse: _Showing available sources_
• Questions: "Are there other data sources that would be valuable to query alongside PostHog data?"
• Demo of Experiments: _Showing Experiment dashboard_
• Questions: "How are you currently cross-referencing test results with other user-behavior data?"
• Demo of LLM Observability: _Showing LLM Dashboard_
• Questions: "How are you gathering data for your AI/LLM products?"

Other questions you could ask while demoing:

• "Who else would find this valuable?"
• "How does this compare to how you're handling this today?"
• "Of what was covered, what did you find most valuable?"

Qualifying

A key component of discovery is qualifying customers to ensure they are a good fit and whether they're speaking with the right people at PostHog. You can find more about how we qualify at PostHog in the new sales qualification guide.

Qualifiers:

• They fit the ICP
• Path to $2k/mo or $20k/year in spend
• Clear problem that PostHog can solve
• Have technical resources to assist with instrumentation of PostHog
• Budget and timeline in place (or keen on moving quickly)

Disqualifiers:

• No path to >=$20K annual spend - Our team looks after customers who are paying or could pay >=$20k+/yr
• Not in ICP - You can gather great product insights when chatting with people in other roles, but we tend to work best with our ICP
• Can't meet technical requirements - To be successful, the customer needs to (at minimum), be able to implement PostHog via the JS/SDKs
• Support request - Be helpful, but if it's better suited for support, you can send them thru the available Support channels
• Startup program - For companies who qualify, we have a special program designed for startups interested in PostHog
• Needs to vary our terms - Either to start an evaluation/PoC of PostHog or generally but without a path to >=$20k in annual spend
• No engineering resources - There is some coding required for a tool like PostHog and customers will need some engineering support to be successful
• Strict compliance constraints - A customer may ask for a very niche security or privacy certification that we don't have
• Need self-hosted - PostHog's self-hosted open-source deployment is made for hobbyists and since we're a small team, we can only provide limited support for it

Identifying your champion

Champions aren't just customers you're friendly with - they're people who will actively sell PostHog internally. While you won't always find a champion, working with one when possible can streamline deals and provide us with valuable feedback along the way.

Examples

Questions to identify champions:

• "Who else is affected by this problem?" (Look for advocacy in their response)
• "How do you typically evaluate new tools at [Company]?" (Champions know the process)
• "What would need to happen for this to get approved?" (Champions understand internal politics)
• "Who would be most excited about solving this?" (Champions will often name themselves)

Characteristics to listen for:

• Using "we" and "us" language (ownership)
• Asking for detailed technical / instrumentation questions
• Mentioning budget or approval processes prior to you asking
• Referencing internal stakeholders by name
• Expressing personal frustration with their current state
• Have a vision for what future state needs to look like

Follow up questions for champions:

• "What's your role in making this decision?"
• "How have you handled similar evaluations in the past?"
• "What concerns might others have about changing tools?"
• "Besides you, who else would we need to win over?"
• "What questions should I be asking that I haven't asked yet?"
• "If you were me, how would you go about positioning PostHog?"
• "What's the best way to position this to [insert stakeholder here]"
• "How can I help you build your internal case for PostHog?"

While you can start identifying potential champions early in the process, building the relationship is an ongoing effort.

Discovery call structure

Give yourself enough time to demo - it can make all the difference!

1. Opening & understanding the situation (~5-7mins)

Goal: Get rapport, learn about their setup, and uncover any frustrations.

Potential questions to flow between:

• "What prompted you to reach out to PostHog?"
• "What are you using for analytics today and how's it working?"
• "What's your experience with tools like PostHog?"
• "Who on your team uses this data and for what?"
• "What decisions are you trying to make that you can't make today?"
• "How does your team typically evaluate new tools?"
• "Is there anyone else who should be part of these conversations?"

2. PostHog demo (~15-20min)

Goal: Show PostHog, focus on relevant features, establish technical credibility, get feedback and ask questions.

Reference the demo section above for how you can incorporate discovery into your demo and learn more about how we do sales in the initial demo playbook.

3. Closing and next steps (~3-10min)

Goal: Establish timeline, confirm mutual fit and next steps.

• If it's not a fit, that's okay! We want to ensure we're not wasting anyone's time. Get alignment from the customer and there may be an opportunity in the future
• If there is a clear opportunity, offer up some actionable next steps (free trial, invite to Slack, generating a quote, help reduce spend, scheduling a call etc.)
• Set expectation that you'll follow up via email or Slack
• Gain an understanding of their timeline
• Route the customer to the next best channel if they are better handled by a separate team (Support, Startup program etc.)

We like to keep things conversational - if you're genuinely curious about their situation, this should all come naturally!

Summary

Discovery can help with addressing gaps in your knowledge about a customer and makes efficient use of both your time and theirs. By understanding their actual needs, challenges, and decision-making process upfront, you can:

• Keep conversations focused
• Avoid wasting time on irrelevant features or solutions
• Build trust through genuine understanding
• Identify the right internal champions
• Move deals forward more efficiently

Helpful docs for more learning:

• Overview
• Account planning
• Outbound sales
• Inbound sales