As an experienced SaaS sales professional who has closed multi-million pound deals across 36 countries, I’ve seen too many founders think they’re just selling a product. They focus on features, pricing, and technical specs. It’s easy to see why this happens – founders are passionate about they’ve built and can’t wait to show people.
But the reality is that prospects don’t wake up in the morning thinking, “I want to buy a new SaaS solution today.” That isn’t what comes to their head. What occupies their thoughts are the problems they’re facing. They’re challenges. Your tool is a byproduct of that problem.
Shift the sales mindset
I’ve worked with countless founders who make the same mistake. They lean heavily on features and functions, pushing demos at every opportunity, hoping the product will sell itself. “Click here and it does that, click here and it does this”. They are showing all the admin features that, frankly, no one actually cares about.
Think about it. Maybe your prospect is currently sending manual emails to low-value leads. They’re doing this tedious work by hand when it could be automated. They need a solution to help them automate that process. But what they don’t need is just another random tool.
This is where you have to sell change, not a product.
How to sell change effectively
The art of selling change requires a different approach, one that relies on storytelling and vision-casting rather than feature-dumping. Here’s how I’ve found success:
1. Agitate the pain
First, you have to agitate the pain. After you’ve done a bit of discovery, highlight your prospect’s current way of working. Make them truly feel the inefficiency or frustration of their current process.
If I were selling a CRM and I phoned a prospect saying, “Would you like to buy a new CRM?”, they’d likely respond, “We have a CRM in place at the moment.”
But if I’m selling change, I would ask targeted questions:
- Does your CRM help you with forecasting?
- Are you sending targeted emails though your CRM?
- How does your CRM integrate with your website?
I’d dig, dig, dig around all the things that make a good CRM valuable. This approach exposes gaps they might not even realise exist.
2. Paint the vision
Once you’ve agitated the pain, paint the vision of what the future could look like if they did use your solution. I use this term a lot but you need to help them see the ‘art of the possible’.
Instead of saying, “If you had this feature, how would that better help you?”, try something like: “If we could automate that process for you, what would the implications be to you and your business?”
Notice the difference? The second approach isn’t about the feature, it’s about the outcome.
Your prospects don’t care about features. They care about results.
3. Make the transition frictionless
Finally, make the transition really easy. Create a frictionless process for them to buy from you. Remove obstacles, simplify contracts, and provide clear next steps.
This is obviously easier said than done, but it will have a massive impact on your sales approach.
Reframe their problems
As a founder, you set up your business to solve a problem. You’ve spent loads of time ensuring there’s a market, and you live and breathe it all day. That’s all you do. But you’re selling to prospects who don’t live and breathe that industry or space. They’re not experts in what you do.
You need to show that you’re a domain expert and sell the change, the vision, the dream. Say something like: “Look, I left my job to build this product because I was speaking to accountants like you all the time. They were telling me that this one thing was wasting five hours of their week, every single week. If I could give you five hours back every week from that manual process you’re doing, what would be the impact on your business?”
Suddenly, you’re not selling an expense management solution anymore. You’re giving that accountant five hours back each week that they can spend with clients or generating new business.
My experience of selling change
My biggest deal as an account executive was selling a product to CFOs across 36 different countries. A multi-million pound ARR deal. And we only showed the product at the last minute, when they involved their technical team.
Why? Because the CFO was never going to log into the solution. He didn’t care what colour it looked like or what happened when you clicked this button or that button – he wasnt going to be clicking on any buttons himself!
The entire sale was based on ROI and vision. We were selling the art of the possible, not the actual product. The product itself didn’t make any difference because the decision-maker wasn’t even going to use it.
Mistakes you have to avoid
- Leaning on features and functions: Your product specs won’t close the deal.
- Pushing demos too early: Hoping the demo will do the selling for you is a recipe for disappointment.
- Assuming the pain is obvious: Sometimes it’s not obvious to prospects that they’ve been doing something a certain way for a long period and might not know there’s a better way. As a founder who lives and breathes your solution, it’s easy to skim over things that seem obvious to you but aren’t to your prospects.
- Focusing on the product rather than outcomes: Prospects don’t care about your product; they care about what it will help them achieve.
A new approach
What if you couldn’t show your product?
What if all you could do was ask great questions, dig around, and sell the art of the possible? Having that mindset will increase your average contract values overnight.
My advice is to slow down. When a prospect asks a question about your product, resist the urge to start screen sharing and launching into a demo. Instead, ask questions that uncover the real need behind their inquiry.
My takeaway
If you do an effective discovery and probe around your prospect’s current way of working, it becomes incredibly easy to sell the change. You don’t need to focus on your product.
Most founders think they’re selling a product, but what they’re really selling is change.
Change in how their prospects work. Change in the results they achieve. Change in their business outcomes.
Master this distinction, and you’ll transform your sales approach and quite possibly, your business trajectory.
But if you take away anything from this, remember: You’re not just selling a tool. You’re selling a better future for your customer.
Author: Matthew Codd
I’m Matthew, I have 15 years of commercial leadership experience, helping VC-backed B2B technology companies scale revenue and transition from founder-led sales.
I use my experience to help early-stage start-ups with GTM expertise, sales best practice, and hiring insights.
I co-founded Cosmic Partners in 2022. We are SaaS sales recruitment specialists for VC backed B2B tech companies.
