“Discovery” is a word that describes what the agency does, not what the client receives. It is the reason the line item gets negotiated down in every second proposal.
Rename the deliverable
We stopped selling discovery and started selling a written, prioritised list of what to fix, with a number beside each item. Same work. Same fee. Almost no pushback, because the client can see the thing they are buying and could act on it without us.
Sell the decision. Do the thinking on your own time and put it in the price.
The test of a good scoping document
If the client could take it to another studio and get a sensible quote, it is a real document. If it only makes sense to the people who wrote it, it was a meeting with a cover page.
What we stopped doing
- Persona workshops for companies that already know their customers by name
- Competitor audits that list features nobody asked for
- Anything with the word “immersion” in it
None of that was fraudulent. It just was not what anybody was actually paying for.
Sell the decision. Do the thinking on your own time and put it in the price.