A 4-week sprint to sharpen discovery skills, bridge pain to impact, and build coaching momentum with your frontline managers.
April 2026 | Dan Smith
Your team completed SPICED training and the foundation is set. The next step is making it stick in daily behavior. A focused sprint creates the pressure and the positive reinforcement to move from "I know the framework" to "I use it naturally."
Reps are identifying pain but reverting to pitching before bridging to impact. Broader discovery across the full solution portfolio is the #1 priority your leadership identified.
Fluent is already transcribing calls, generating SPICED scorecards, and syncing to Salesforce. The foundation for measurement is built. Now we focus the lens on one skill.
Andrew's Q2 sprint targets 8+ discovery meetings per month per team. This sprint doesn't add meetings. It makes the ones you're already having significantly more effective.
An Impact Sprint zeroes in on one key skill for an outsized improvement in rep performance. With Fluent as your AI coaching engine, we compress what normally takes 7 weeks into 4.
Sprint 1 Focus: Pain to Impact. We recommend starting here because it addresses your leadership's #1 concern (deeper discovery) and creates a waterfall effect on every downstream stage. If reps bridge pain to impact consistently, deal velocity improves and cross-sell opportunities surface naturally.
Binary scoring. Approaching or Meets. No "exceeding" category. The goal is consistent demonstration, not perfection. Certification after 6-8 customer calls showing the skill.
| Skill | Approaching Expectations | Meets Expectations |
|---|---|---|
| Pain Question | Only situational or rhetorical questions asked | Open-ended pain question asked. Starts with "How" or "What" rather than confrontational "Why" |
| Deepen Pain | Passive listening ("ok", "got it") or pivots to situational questions | Picks up on an important word/phrase and asks the customer to expand |
| Impact Question | No impact question detected, or compounded with other questions | Uses "impact", "affect", or asks about consequences of the problem persisting |
| Active Listening | Only passive listening shown (uh huh, yup, got it) | After 2+ min customer monologue, mirrors an emotional tone word in summary or question |
| Summarize Impact | Only surface-level pain uncovered | Identifies the #1 executive priority. Sets up for understanding rational and emotional impact |
Fluent Integration
Configure Fluent's game tape review to score against these 5 dimensions after every discovery call. Hardik can map these to the existing SPICED scorecard fields in Salesforce.
Four workstreams run in parallel. Fluent provides AI coaching from week 2. Managers lead from the front. Wins get celebrated publicly. By week 4, reps are certified and the team is ready for Sprint 2.
Five personas, clear lanes. The sprint works when managers lead from the front and enablement designs from behind the scenes.
Andrew set discovery volume targets for Q2. This sprint improves the quality of those same meetings. Better discovery means faster progression from Stage 1 to Stage 2, and more cross-sell opportunities surfaced per call.
% of discovery calls where an impact question is asked. Fluent scorecard trends. Number of game tapes reviewed in team meetings. Manager shout-outs given.
Stage 1 to Stage 2 conversion rate. Average deal size (cross-sell lift). Time in Stage 1. Multi-solution opportunities created per quarter.
The key insight: Andrew's Q2 plan measures volume (number of discoveries, proposals, solutioning meetings). This sprint measures skill quality within those same meetings. Together, they give leadership a complete picture: are we doing enough, and are we doing it well?
This sprint is yours to shape. Here's what I'd suggest as immediate actions. Take this framework, make it fit your team, and shoot it back to me so we can iterate before launch.
See you at Impact Summit in a few weeks.
Dan Smith | dan@winningbydesign.com