Mistake #19: I sold relief. He was buying the whole climb.
If the buyer likes the demo and nothing moves, the gap you named is too small to cross.
Every demo ends with a gap. "Fewer tickets." "Less manual work." That's relief, not a reason to change a business.
My demos ended with "so, fewer tickets." The buyer nodded. Then he asked for the price.
Here's what I missed:
Out of pain is the middle of the gap, not the top. He isn't buying relief. He's buying the climb from pain today to the outcome he wants.
Most gaps sound like this:
"Manual to automated."
"Hard to easy."
"Slow to fast."
"More tickets to fewer tickets."
All 4 are true. None of them is worth the effort of changing.
If the gap sounds like a process change, it's too shallow. Stretch it.
Solution: 1 question, asked until it hurts.
"So what does that change in the business?"
Keep going until you hit money, time, trust, energy, status or control.
Example:
Prospect: "We need the reports to update themselves."
Me, before: "So we go from manual reports to automated dashboards." (he agreed, then asked for pricing)
Me, after: "So what does that change in the business?"
Prospect: "My team stops waiting on me for numbers."
Me: "And what does that change?"
Prospect: "We'd make decisions on Monday instead of Thursday. And I'd get my Sunday nights back."
Before, I had "manual to automated."
After, I had:
Time: decisions on Monday, not Thursday.
Trust: 1 set of numbers everybody believes.
Control: he stops being the reporting system.
Energy: his Sunday nights back.
Now the gap, in his words:
"We're not going from manual reports to automated dashboards. We're going from me being the reporting system to a team that runs on numbers everybody trusts, because today the numbers depend on 1 person and get outdated fast."
Why it matters:
Old way: I sold the relief. Fewer tickets, less manual work. Every vendor sells relief, so the buyer compared us on price. I hated it. I just didn't know a better way yet.
New way: name the whole gap, from pain today to the outcome he wants, in money, time, trust, energy, status and control. Then the metric, and how long it takes to get there. When the gap is bigger than the price, budget stops being the problem.
Kill the old way. Install the new one.
What you're looking for:
The business stakes: money or time, with a number.
The personal stakes: trust, energy, status, control, in his words.
The metric: how he'll know the gap is closing.
The time: how long it takes to solve it.
Secret Sauce: Sell the whole gap, not the relief.
Stretch it until it hits money, time, trust, energy, status or control.
Best,
Virgil
PS: Mistake #20: The gap was clear. The climb looked too long.