People Don't Spend Money to Get Better. They Spend Money to Stop Getting Worse.
Your pitch is a vitamin. The painkiller is underneath it.
Remember your last customer call.
You led with “We help you give you time back to focus on growing the business.” “We help you optimize your spending.”
You highlighted improvement you could deliver…Better, faster…
The buyer validated what you are said and seemed interested. They ask a few polite questions and indicated they will share the learnings with the team.
Then they ghosted you.
Here’s what I’ve learned across 300+ founder conversations: buyers don’t spend money to improve. They spend money to stop getting worse.
Improvement is nice to have. What sucks today that has real consequences?
I worked with a founder recently whose story was tied to improvement. Better visibility, better decisions, and better margins. He had a solid product that generated real results. But, his calls kept ending the same way. “This is great! I’ll share with the team.”
We rewrote one sentence. Instead of “we help you improve your margins,” the opening became: you’re working harder than ever, and the business is making less.
His product didn’t change. His buyer didn’t change. But, the conversation was radically different.
The first version asks the buyer to imagine a better future. That’s easy to delay. But, nobody gets fired for not improving.
The second version names what’s already happening to them. If it doesn’t get fixed there are real consequences. That’s a NOW problem.
This is painkillers vs. vitamins. If you run out of vitamins you go on Amazon and order more to get in a few days. If you have a toothache you go out in the middle of the night on your bike, in the rain, with hope the drugstore is open.
Every strong value proposition I’ve seen from a founder can be stated both ways.
“We increase pipeline” is a vitamin. “Your reps are spending 60% of their time on accounts that will never buy” is a painkiller.
“We improve retention” is a vitamin. “You’re churning customers faster this quarter and you don’t know why” is a painkiller.
“We save you money on cloud spend” is a vitamin. “Your cloud bill grew 40% this year and your revenue didn’t” is a painkiller.
Notice what the second version does in each case. It doesn’t promise a gain. It names a loss that’s already underway. The buyer doesn’t have to imagine anything. They just have to recognize themselves.
Making the buyer feel seen is essential. When you name the loss they’re privately living with, you’re not selling. You’re holding up a mirror. They lean in, because you just described their world better than they could. This is the concept of SPEED in my SPRINT Framework.
Here’s the test. Take your current opening line. Ask yourself: is this a promise to improve later, or address the pain they feel right now?
If it’s a promise about the future, you’re asking them to buy improvement. There are always things that can get better But doing nothing is easy, free, and safe.
When something is getting worse it feels different. Now the comparison isn’t “your product vs. other products.” It’s “act now vs. risk what’s coming.” That’s a different decision. Unknown risk/timing is scary.
Remember, this isn’t about creating fear. If the loss isn’t tangible then this approach doesn’t work. The loss has to be true, specific, and observable in their own business. Your job isn’t to invent the pain. It’s to get them to validate the consequences of not addressing by a specific time.
Most “pains” have existed for months or even years. The buyer built a workaround. They have already accepted it as their reality. They are numb to it. The problem has been there so long it stopped registering as a problem at all.
So look at your pitch. Do you use words like: better, faster, more, optimize, streamline, or unlock.
Then find the loss underneath your product addresses. The thing that’s already going the wrong way for your buyer, right now, with or without you.
Lead with that.
People don’t spend money to get better.
They spend money to stop getting worse.
If your calls keep ending with “This was great! You gave us a lot to think about,” you may feel good at the time. But, you’re burning runway on conversations you aren’t positioned to win. The SPRINT GTM Diagnostic will show you why you are stuck.