Ton Verleg · 25 August 2025 · 5 min read

Your Solution is Not the Insight

Based on a true story.

Are you struggling to find the right insight to get the customer’s attention? When lacking insights, do you default back to “pitching” your solution?

I believe your customer will not see your solution as insightful. Talking too soon about your solution will put customers off.

In Selling with the Buyer’s Perspective terms, when you are already in Change to Who? while your customer is still in Why Change? or Change to What?, the conversation is misaligned — and this is why customers “politely” end the meeting.

How to do this differently? Let me explain via a story.

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The second-hand car business

Jake, a salesman at an express logistics provider, was meeting a company providing paperwork and car registration services to new owners after second-hand cars were sold. They did this all over Europe. EuroReg Solutions was a successful company. But lately revenue had stalled, and competition had gained market share.

After some chit-chat and a few questions, Jake thought he knew exactly why revenues were down. The paperwork and registration plates didn’t arrive fast enough for the new owners. The Operations Director shared that this process typically took five days. The company used a premium service from several postal companies, mainly to keep the cost down. For orders in the larger cities, door-to-door was under three days. “So that’s pretty good,” he said.

When Jake showed the Operations Director the faster transit times he could deliver, he didn’t get the response he anticipated. “Thanks for showing me, but you are way too expensive. That’s not something we are looking into right now.”

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A different perspective

After the meeting, I sat down with Jake, helping him to see a different perspective. I asked three questions:

• What are customers most interested in?
• How are they achieving these objectives?
• How can you help?

At first, Jake thought the answers were: a faster service for their customers; by paying more for it; and give them a small discount if they sign immediately.

I flipped the sales script around.

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The buyer’s perspective

Companies are interested in growing their business. That’s the core objective. How they achieve it is a different story for every company. There is no one holy grail strategy, and the truth is that most boardroom meetings spend most of their time discussing options and deciding whether to stick with the current strategy — their status quo — or move in a new direction.

So how can you help?

I asked Jake to go online and look at EuroReg’s star ratings. “What do you see?” Jake said it was three out of five, and that many new car owners complained about slow service despite a promise of fast delivery. “You see,” said Jake, “I was right!”

Unfortunately, Jake was still in a different world — his world.

“Open ChatGPT,” I said, “and ask for five research articles, with links, from credible research companies about the effect of customer experience on business growth and why this is a priority in choosing a growth strategy.”

He found two from McKinsey, one from PwC, one from Zendesk, and a 2024 Forrester CX index. We decided to use the PwC article for the next meeting.

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The next meeting

This time we were meeting the Commercial Director. Again some chit-chat, but then at the right moment Jake said: “I found an interesting article from PricewaterhouseCoopers, and they claim that bad experiences are driving customers away — faster than you think.”

Now Jake was getting a reaction. “What do you mean?” she asked. Jake shared that 32% of customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience. “Your current CX score is three stars out of five. And you probably know how many other people a customer shares a bad experience with?”

The Commercial Director replied that she had read this somewhere and guessed nine or ten. Jake’s turn: “Fifty per cent of customers will share a bad experience publicly online — where it can be seen by hundreds or thousands of potential buyers. And I’d guess that is the reason your rating is three out of five.”

“I have helped similar businesses improve their CX rating significantly without breaking the bank. Would you be interested in exploring this with me?” “OK — but how?” Jake: “You don’t have to change all your service offerings to express delivery. Offering it at a small surcharge will motivate many new owners to choose it. And simply asking those customers proactively about their experience will increase your ratings.”

We walked out with a confirmed date and time for the next appointment, with the Commercial Director and their purchasing department.

And we didn’t even have to negotiate or discount.

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Conclusion

Your solutions are not the insight buyers are waiting for. They want you to help them see a different perspective on their challenges — and for most of them, that is growth. How to achieve it, backed by third-party research and your own stories, will get more traction and close more deals.

Thanks, Jake.