Cybernomics: Where Business Meets Tech

Vendors, Stop Telling Me My Problem

• Bruyning Media

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In this clip, Karl Mosgofian breaks down why most vendor pitches lose buyers in the first minutes and how to fix it with a simple, direct first-meeting flow. We show how to validate pain fast, lead with what you built, and make differentiation tangible so a champion can emerge.

• One-slide pain validation with a quick head nod
• Skip the long problem story and benefit monologue
• Lead with what you make in plain language
• Highlight concrete differentiation that fits buyer constraints
• Use a simple proof point instead of deep technical dives
• Design a low-friction next step for pilots and security

FULL EPISODE TITLE: Go-to-Market Strategies of a Veteran CIO

Josh's LinkedIn

SPEAKER_00:

So one thing that's very common is that vendors have a tendency to spend a lot of time telling me about my problem. And I understand where this comes from, especially with startups, because the decks that they've been building and the communicating they've been doing has largely been to VCs to try and get funding. And so those decks start by defining the problem and then saying, here's why you should invest in me to go build a company to solve that. The thing is, it's my problem. I'm living it. So you do not need to spend a lot of time telling me about my own problems. And in fact, when you do that, if we're on Zoom, I'm multitasking, right? Because you don't have to tell me my problem. I'm living it. So there are often multiple slides. People are trying to build a whole story about the problem, but they don't need to. And in fact, it's counterproductive. And in fact, you're putting it at the beginning of your deck, which is right where you need to grab somebody. If you lose them early, now you got to get them back. Right. And by the way, we're good at like multitasking without you knowing it. So you think we're engaged, but no, we're not. We're somewhere else. So my recommendation to folks is look, a single slide that lays out the problem. What we hear from most people is these are the kind of issues that they have in this domain space that we're talking about today. Does that resonate with you? People can read the slide. You don't have to read the slide. By the way, that's that's presentation 101. Do not read the slide. But a lot of people read the slide and you're just, you're dying. You're sitting there going, yeah, yeah, yeah, get on with it. I glanced at the slide. Yes, those are my problems. At most, a single slide, here's generally the problems. Does any, you probably have similar stuff. You're looking for the head nod. Does one of these stand out to you that's especially top of mind for you? Or do you have something that's not on this list that's like, hey, you missed something, and this is really a problem for me? That's now, first of all, they're engaged. They're not just passively listening to you. You're getting some useful information and you're just validating the problem, right? So that's thing one. Thing two is people generally take way too long to tell me what it is. Like, what do you actually make? So first people tell me my problem, and then they read some book or or they heard from one of us, to be fair, that we need to understand the business benefit of your solution.

unknown:

Right?

SPEAKER_00:

Don't talk to me about technology, talk to me about the business benefits. That's okay. We need a little bit of that, but people overdo it, right? So they first they spend, they have 30 minutes. They spend 10 minutes telling me my problem. They spend 10 minutes telling me how good it would be if that problem was solved, right? They tell me the business benefits. And now I'm 20 minutes into this thing and I don't even know what you do. I don't know who you are. I don't know what you do. I don't know why I should care about you. And you haven't told me anything that I don't know. Because I know the business benefit. Yes, obviously. If you solve that problem, this would be yeah, I can figure that out. So my recommendation is very little time on what the problem is, and very little time in the first meeting about the business benefit. I get that we need that, but the thing is, is that I only care about that if I think I actually care about you. So the bulk of that first meeting should be this is the thing we have, and this is why it's different. That's the other thing I think people miss a lot. They're like, hey, here's a generic problem. We have a generic solution. Here are all the business benefits if you could solve it. Great. Again, you haven't really told me that much. Why you? It's funny because if you really think about it, that's what selling is. But people don't actually do a lot of selling. They do a lot of high-level 30,000-foot talking. But I actually need you to sell. Like, don't be afraid to say this is why we're really good. For whatever reason that is, by the way. And again, I don't necessarily need like a technical deep dive, but I need to understand, like, we have a particular approach to this problem that's different than other people. Or maybe you don't. Maybe you have a solution that looks a lot like a lot of other people's solutions, but you have to have some differentiation. So maybe you come in and say, listen, a lot of people have solved this problem, but we have a unique pricing model that makes us much less expensive than other people. That's okay. Don't, don't be afraid to, but you got to give me some differentiation. You got to tell me why I should care about you. And so that's my recommendation to people for for the first, that first meeting, if you're, if you're lucky enough to get it. Later on, we can talk about how you help me sell this thing internally. And that's where I do need to talk more about business benefits and things. And we can we can talk some more about that because I think that's kind of an interesting topic as well.