Naming the feature, not the job: 'sounds useful' isn't a buying signal
This week in The Pivot: pitching what your product does while your best prospects nod politely and never buy. The fix is a three-question chain that finds what they're actually paying for.
Hey friends 👋
Every Monday in The Pivot, we share one mistake we’re seeing founders make, and the quick redirect that makes all the difference — in just 250 words.
Here’s this week’s:
The antipattern: describing your product, not the job it does.
The demo went well. She said it sounded useful.
But she didn’t buy.
Founders assume wrong timing, wrong price, wrong contact. It’s usually simpler: the pitch describes the feature and skips the job it does for them.
“Inventory tracking” is what your product does. “Protect a buyer relationship I spent 20 years building” is what your customer is paying for. Prospects don’t feel urgency for features — they feel urgency for outcomes.
The fix: start from the outcome and work backward.
Apply the “so that / but why?” chain to your own value prop.
Inventory tracking → so that I know what I can sell → so that I don’t lose a sale → but why does that matter? I protect a relationship I’ve spent 20 years building.
Stop at the layer that hurts. That’s your pitch.
The tool: “so that / but why?” chain
Three questions in sequence: Why do they want that? → So that? → But why does that matter? Start with the feature, end up somewhere emotional. The first question gets you the functional job; the third gets you why they’ll actually pull out a credit card.
Nobody buys a drill bit to make a hole — they want some freaking art on the wall.
Run the chain on your own value prop before your next customer call. Your pitch lives at layer three.
Until next week,
—jdm
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