TL;DR
A seasoned VP of Sales couldn’t answer what made his product different. The issue wasn’t sales, it was clarity. Most teams talk about features instead of the problem they solve. Buyers don’t care about specs; they care about fixing what’s broken. When everyone tells the same clear story, selling becomes easy again.
I watched a $50M company’s VP of Sales stumble through their value prop on a demo call last week.
This is the head of sales, 20 years of SaaS experience, a guy who crushed quota for his entire sales career, fumbling over the most basic of questions…
The prospect asked, “So what exactly makes you different?” and he stumbled through five different answers in two minutes. Features, benefits, use cases…a poo poo platter of nothingness that left everyone in the room feeling underwhelmed.
Here’s the thing: this is not a one-off incident; there is an epidemic of sales leaders who can’t communicate why someone should buy their product. Founders think they have a sales problem, but what they actually have is a clarity problem. This sales leader didn’t forget how to sell; he just used to work for a company that knew what problem they were solving and who they were solving it for.
Your team can’t sell what they can’t explain.
Most founders build their messaging from the inside out, starting with what the product does and then trying to connect that to why their prospect should care.
Your buyers don’t care about your features. They care about the problems that keep them up at 2 AM, and they are waiting, hopefully, for someone to show up with a solution that makes sense. They care about bridging the gap between where they are and where they need to be.
The shift: Stop explaining what you built. Start explaining the problem you solve that no one else is talking about.
When your entire team can tell the same story (the story your buyers are already telling themselves) that’s when sales stops feeling like a slog and starts feeling like you are delivering Publishers Clearing House checks.
If your best salespeople are still explaining features instead of owning problems, we should talk.
Hit reply and tell me: What’s the one thing your buyers believe that your competition doesn’t even acknowledge?
