Backstory: I tried to fix growth with product. The problem was my sales process.
Mistake #2: I kept building features and hoped the next one would fix our growth.
Every sales call ended with a request.
One more integration. One more setting. One more report.
So we built it.
I was sure the next feature would unlock growth, and customers would just start showing up because we built this new thing.
They didn't.
What we built instead:
Good: A product that could do almost anything. Super flexible, super robust.
Bad: A product that took, best case, 6 weeks and 4 people to configure.
Bad: A product that took 17 developers to maintain.
Bad: A bunch of features that, other than 2–3 clients, nobody used.
Here's what I missed:
I was trying to fix growth with product. What actually needed fixing was my sales process.
The customer never wanted the feature.
He asked for it because he thought it would get him a result.
Nobody buys a quarter-inch drill. They buy the quarter-inch hole.
The question isn't "do we have the feature?"
The question is: does it move the number he gets measured on?
Because that number is the slide in his Monday 10 AM meeting, and every week it shows success or failure.
Solution: We stopped selling the product and sold two things instead.
The result: a number he can measure. That's the logical reason to buy.
The dream outcome: the reason he actually buys. That one is emotional.
People buy emotionally and justify with logic.
There are only four emotional reasons anyone buys B2B software:
Certainty. Nobody got fired for choosing AWS.
Significance. "I built this myself over the weekend."
Growth. Whatever helps me grow the fastest.
Belonging. The AI budgets spent so nobody looks left behind.
For our customers, the number was:
Customer care tickets down 56%
Customer service costs down 23%
The emotional reason was certainty.
We were not a software provider. We were their partner.
We made sure the solution worked and drove results, and we had proof everywhere.
The moment you logged in, the dashboard showed cost reduction, retained revenue, and customer satisfaction. All updated in real time.
The results:
Every case study led with the number, not the feature list
The dashboard proved it every day, without anyone asking
6 years of operations before EasyPost acquired us, and technically zero churn from our ICP
That last one is the metric I'm most proud of.
So write two sentences.
The number you can promise. And the reason they actually buy.
If there's no number tied to the customer's North Star, you'll be fighting churn every Monday at 10 AM.
Secret Sauce: Sell the hole, not the drill.
Sell the results, not the feature.
Best,
Virgil
PS: Mistake #3: I discounted to close deals.