You beat out all the competitors. The buying committee agrees your solution is the best one. The deal feels done. Then the weeks start passing and nothing happens.
Last week we talked about inherent value, the buyer’s sense that solving this problem is worth the cost and disruption of change. This week is about what makes inherent value believable: problem clarity.
Here’s what typically happens in a sales process. The buyer comes to you with a solution in mind. “We need a better CRM.” “We need faster reporting.” That sounds like a problem. It isn’t. It’s a symptom that already got translated into a requirement. The real problem was never discussed, and the conversation jumps straight to demos and pricing.
You win on the strength of your pitch. The buyer prefers you. But when it’s time to commit, they have to write a business case, defend the investment to their CFO, and convince colleagues to change how they work. And they realize they can’t quite articulate why this matters enough to do all of that. Either the value isn’t there, or they just don’t know how to articulate it.
The cause of their inability is the real problems were never documented. The business case has no foundation.
This is where you can help. You have a real edge. You’ve probably seen this situation dozens of times across many companies. The buyer has seen it once, in their specific context. They know their world deeply. You know the pattern. That combination, when you actually have the conversation, produces something neither of you could build alone.
The goal isn’t for you to understand their problem so you can position your solution. The goal is for the buyer to understand their own problem more clearly than they did before talking to you.
When that happens, they can picture the cost of staying put. They can name the KPIs that are suffering. They can explain to their CFO not just what they want to buy but why it matters and what changes if they solve it.
That conversation is what builds the business case. And the business case is what turns a buyer who prefers you into one who buys.
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Tags: b2b, b2b buying, buyer, buyer commitment, commitment gap, decision making, purchase decision, sales
