When > What

A reframe that makes your product intuitive... and keeps you sane

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I’ve noticed a pattern where it’s very hard for B2B founders to describe our products in sales conversations.

Customers don’t “get it.” At best, they understand IN THEORY what the product does, and how the features work, but they don’t connect it to their world.

Ultimately, they don’t buy. They ghost us after saying something confusing like: “This is awesome, I can see how it can be helpful, let me circle back with the team and let you know when this fits into our priorities!”

And we don’t know whether:

1. They’re not a good-fit customer

2. They lied to us

3. We’re bad at sales

4. We have a shitty product nobody wants

5. We just can’t describe the product well

Etc. Welcome to hell.

How to escape: When vs. what

I have found that the simplest “way out” is:

• Stop describing our product based on WHAT it is

• Start describing our product based on WHEN it’s relevant

A firsthand example:

My new startup is a dev tool - it’s a platform-as-a-service to build secure web applications in your AWS account.

And when I describe it like this, based on WHAT IT IS, you start to fall asleep.

But it’s so much worse than that:

• I don’t know exactly who to target, because basically everyone on AWS could be a buyer

• I need to work miracles on sales calls to figure out how this product might fit into your world (and I am, to put it nicely, incapable of sales miracles)

• I’m going to get a million shards of feedback that don’t give me any clear direction, leaving me in the fog of ambiguity, in the pit of despair.

Instead. Here’s how I reframe my product description based on the MOMENT my product is relevant:

When you’re trying to get SOC 2 compliant, you buy Vanta and realize it’s going to take ~months of eng work. Or, in just a few minutes, you can “wrap” what you currently have with our AWS security product, and all Vanta’s checklist items turn green instantly - and stay green.

When I describe it based on the MOMENT it is relevant, you instantly get it.

Plus:

• I know exactly who to target, and when to target them

• I know exactly what to build and why

• More importantly, I know *who not to target, what not to build, and what not to focus on*

When > what.