Could You Be Selling the Right Thing… Just in the Wrong Way?

Why logical value isn’t always what moves a decision.

I had a conversation recently with a founder building a SaaS product in the HR and recruitment space.

He’s not at the napkin-sketch stage. A few years in and the product has been through a lot. It’s been built, rebuilt, reworked, repositioned, dragged through the usual founder obstacle course with a few extra potholes thrown in for fun.

And now, finally, it feels like there’s something there.

A product that works.

A clearer proposition.

A better sense of what the market might need.

But the sales motion still wasn’t quite landing in the way he wanted.

There were conversations happening. Good ones, apparently. People were interested. They liked the idea. They could see the logic.

But that classic founder question was sitting underneath all of it:

“If they get it… why aren’t they buying?”

Very familiar.

And very frustrating.

Because when you’ve spent years building something, and you can finally explain why it matters, it’s tempting to assume the next job is just to get more people to understand the logic.

So naturally, we started talking about the commercial case.

The ROI.

The numbers.

The cost of hiring badly.

The wasted spend.

The inefficiency.

The fact that companies are paying to attract candidates, reject them, and then go back to market again when they need more people later.

All of that matters.

But then there was a moment where something shifted.

Because yes, the ROI argument was true.

But I found myself asking:

“Is that what they’re actually waking up worrying about?”

What was actually going on

On paper, the buyer might care about ROI.

Of course they do.

They’re in HR or recruitment. They have budgets. They need to justify spend. They probably do need to show that this thing saves time, improves candidate experience, increases efficiency, or makes hiring more effective.

But most people don’t walk around emotionally connected to a spreadsheet.

They don’t sit on the train thinking:

“God, I really need to optimise our recruitment ROI this quarter.”

Maybe some do.

Bless them.

But more often, the feeling is much more human.

It’s more like:

“Where are all the good people?”

“Why are we starting from scratch again?”

“Why does this process still feel so clunky?”

“Why are we spending so much time on candidates we’ve already had contact with?”

“Why does hiring always feel harder than it should?”

That’s a different conversation.

And it matters.

Because if your messaging is built around the thing they need to justify later, but not the thing they’re actually feeling now, you can end up being logically right… and still not land.

The bit founders don’t always see

A lot of founders sell to the business case too early.

Not because they’re wrong.

Usually because they’ve had to spend so long proving that the thing is commercially valid.

They’ve built the model.

They’ve done the maths.

They’ve worked out the market opportunity.

They’ve had investor conversations.

They know the rational argument inside out.

So when they get in front of a buyer, they lead with that.

The efficiency.

The savings.

The measurable upside.

The clever mechanics.

And again, that all has a place.

But sometimes it misses the real door in.

Because people might justify with ROI.

But they often engage because you’ve named something they’re tired of carrying.

A more grounded way to look at it

Instead of asking:

“What’s the strongest business case for this?”

It can be more useful to ask:

“What is the thing this person is quietly sick of dealing with?”

That’s where the language usually gets sharper.

For this founder, the product could absolutely be explained through efficiency and ROI.

But the more interesting emotional hook was something closer to:

“Why does every hiring round feel like starting from scratch?”

That’s the bit that makes someone lean in.

Because now you’re not asking them to care about your product.

You’re showing them you understand their world.

Where the sales conversation changes

This is where messaging starts to get more useful.

Because once you get closer to the real pain, the conversation becomes less about:

“Let me show you how our product works.”

And more about:

“Is this the thing that keeps happening for you too?”

That’s a much better starting point.

Because if they say yes, you’re not forcing relevance.

You’ve found it.

Then the ROI has somewhere to land.

The numbers become proof.

The product becomes the mechanism.

The case study becomes evidence.

But the first job is recognition.

Not explanation.

Because here’s the truth

The pain your buyer reports in a board paper is not always the pain they feel in their body.

And if you only speak to the first one, you might sound sensible… but forgettable.

If you speak to the second one, they feel seen.

That’s usually where momentum starts.

One thing to take away

If your sales conversations are full of people saying:

“That’s interesting.”

“I can see the value.”

“We should definitely talk again.”

…but they’re still not moving, I wouldn’t only look at the pitch or the product.

I’d look at the pain you’re leading with.

And I’d ask:

Are we talking about the thing they can justify buying - or the thing they actually want solved?

Because very often, the real buying energy lives in the gap between the two.