We’ve all been there, you’re on a call, walking through your solution’s features, only to hear a polite, “Sounds interesting, we’ll think about it.” Weeks later, the deal quietly dies. Why? Because you didn’t help your buyer make the business case themselves.
Here’s the truth few salespeople are taught that buyers rarely make decisions based on your product alone they make decisions based on the quantified impact of solving their problem. And yet, most sellers stop short, giving demos and brochures instead of helping buyers calculate the real cost of inaction.
Why Most Business Cases Fail
Sales training often emphasises closing techniques, objection handling, and pipeline management. But when it comes to building a credible business case, the teaching stops at “show ROI slides” or “highlight cost savings.” That’s not enough. When sellers take the lead in calculating ROI, they risk scepticism or pushback. But when they guide buyers to quantify the true cost of their challenges, buyers internalise the impact and feel ownership of the decision. Suddenly, the abstract “solution” becomes a concrete business imperative. This is a subtle yet powerful principle from the Sandler Rulebook: “People don’t argue with their own data.”
Consider a mid-market technology company struggling with client retention. The account executive had pitched a ticketing platform to streamline operations. She started with a standard demo highlighting features like automated ticket routing, dashboards and integrations. The client nodded politely but never committed.
Instead, she shifted the conversation. Using a Sandler-inspired approach, she asked questions like:
- “How much does it cost each time a ticket sits unresolved beyond your SLA?”
- “What’s the average retention rate for customers due to delayed responses?”
- “If these issues continued for a year, what would the financial impact be on recurring revenue?”
Together, they worked through a simple calculation: unresolved tickets were costing £120,000 annually, and poor retention was reducing recurring revenue by another £250,000. Now the buyer was staring at real numbers their numbers. They hadn’t been told the solution would “save X pounds” they had arrived at it themselves.
The outcome? The deal closed within a month, not because of a flashy demo, but because the buyer could clearly see the cost of doing nothing.
The Seller’s Role: Guide, Don’t Prescribe
This is where many salespeople go wrong. The instinct is to sell features or highlight some ROI calculator. The Sandler philosophy flips this: salespeople act as guides who help buyers uncover their own truths.
Practical behaviours include:
1. Ask Discovery Questions That Quantify Pain:
- “How long does it take your team to resolve X?”
- “What happens when a customer leaves?”
- “How many hours of manual work could we eliminate?”
These questions do more than gather information they create the data the buyer will later use to justify the investment.
2. Facilitate the Calculation, Don’t Deliver It: Share frameworks, templates, or simple arithmetic, but let the buyer populate the numbers. People trust conclusions they arrive at themselves. A seller’s insight is in guiding the process and asking the right probing questions, not in presenting pre-packaged ROI slides.
Practical Takeaways for Your Next Deal
1. Flip the Script on ROI Conversations Instead of “Our solution saves you £X,” ask, “What do you think this problem is costing you today?” Let the buyer do the math. You’re not just selling software, tools, or services you’re helping them build a defensible business case internally.
2. Anchor the Value in Pain, Not Features Buyers act to avoid loss more often than to pursue gain. By helping quantify the cost of unresolved problems, you make the intangible tangible. Using their own data to highlight risk turns your solution into a strategic lever rather than a nice-to-have product.
By empowering buyers to calculate the cost of their own pain, sellers leverage the most fundamental truth of decision-making: people don’t argue with their own data. It’s not manipulation, it’s clarity. The buyer sees the impact on revenue, efficiency, or customer satisfaction and naturally becomes their own champion.
Moreover, this approach builds credibility. Instead of pitching, you’re coaching. Instead of selling, you’re consulting. And when the numbers are theirs, the decision is theirs but the credit is mutual.
In every deal, the ultimate barrier isn’t a feature mismatch or a competitive price it’s an unclear business case. Buyers need to justify change internally, and sellers who know how to guide them through this calculation consistently win. The lesson: don’t just sell a solution help your buyer quantify the cost of doing nothing. When they see the numbers for themselves, the decision becomes obvious.
And that, more than anything else, is the business case no one taught you to build.
