Latest / Closing the Deal with Fexingo: Sales, Negotiation, and Revenue Conversations for Operators / How a Sales Rep Won by Asking the Buyer to Write the Business Case
Transcript
- Lucas: Let me tell you about a deal that closed in three weeks when it should have taken three months — and the rep's only real move was to ask the buyer to write their own business case. Luna: Wait — the buyer wrote the business case? Not the rep? Lucas: Exactly. The rep was selling a mid-market CRM platform. Annual contract value around $340,000. The economic buyer was the VP of Sales Operations at a logistics company — a guy who had been burned by a previous CRM implementation that promised the world and delivered a headache. Luna: So skepticism was baked in from the start. Lucas: Completely. The VP had already rejected two competing proposals because the projected ROI numbers felt like fiction. The rep knew that if she handed him another spreadsheet with her own assumptions, she'd get the same door. So she flipped the script. Luna: How exactly? Lucas: She said something like: 'I know you've been burned before. I'm not going to give you my ROI model because you shouldn't trust it. Instead, I want you to tell me what success looks like for your team — and I'll help you quantify it, but you write the first draft.' Luna: And the VP actually agreed to do the work? Lucas: He did. And here's why: by asking him to write the business case, she did three things at once. First, she signaled that she wasn't trying to hide anything. Second, she forced him to articulate his own pain points in concrete terms — not just 'we need better reporting' but 'our reps spend 4 hours a week manually entering data, which costs us X in lost selling time.' And third, she turned him from a gatekeeper into an internal champion, because once he'd written the case, he owned it. Luna: Ownership is huge. He can't reject his own logic. Lucas: Right. And that's the psychological trigger. When you write something down, you commit to it. The rep essentially gave him a blank document and said 'fill in the reasons to buy.' The buyer ended up building a model that showed a 12-month payback period based on his own numbers — numbers he had to defend to the CFO. Luna: So the rep was basically outsourcing the heavy lifting while increasing her credibility. She couldn't be accused of cooking the books. Lucas: Exactly. And the buyer's CFO asked the obvious question: 'How did you come up with these numbers?' The VP said, 'I calculated them myself.' That's infinitely more persuasive than 'the vendor told me.' Luna: Now, this tactic obviously doesn't work in every situation. When does it backfire? Lucas: If the buyer is too busy or too junior to have the authority or the appetite to write anything. This only works with an economic buyer who has a clear stake in the outcome. Also, if your product is extremely simple or low-cost, the exercise feels like overkill. But for six-figure deals where the buyer needs to justify the spend internally? It's gold. Luna: What about the risk that the buyer writes a weak case — maybe they underestimate the ROI because they don't know your product well enough? Lucas: That's a real risk. The rep has to guide without leading. She offered to review his draft and add context — but only after he had the first pass. She said 'I'll fill in the blanks on implementation timelines and training costs, but you keep the pen on the benefits.' That way, she ensured the case was realistic without losing his ownership. Luna: So she still had a hand in it, but from the passenger seat. Lucas: Exactly. And this is where the tactic gets interesting. By letting the buyer lead, the rep also discovered something she wouldn't have otherwise: the buyer's real priority wasn't sales productivity — it was data accuracy. That became the centerpiece of the business case, and it was something the rep might have buried if she'd written the case herself. Luna: So she learned the buyer's true hot button without having to ask a dozen discovery questions. Lucas: Right. The business case itself became the ultimate discovery tool. The buyer wrote 'reduce duplicate records by 20%' as a benefit. The rep hadn't even emphasized that feature in her demos. She pivoted the rest of the conversation around data hygiene. Luna: I've seen a similar dynamic in consulting engagements — when a client writes the problem statement, they're more bought in. Lucas: It's the same principle. The act of writing forces specificity. A buyer who says 'we need better efficiency' is vague. A buyer who writes 'we need to cut lead response time from 12 hours to 2 hours' has a measurable target. That specificity makes the sales conversation concrete. Luna: And it also creates a paper trail. Once the buyer writes it down, they can't unsee it. Lucas: That's the lock-in. And the rep in this case used that to accelerate the close. She scheduled a one-hour review meeting where the VP walked through his business case with her. At the end, she said, 'If this is accurate, does it make sense to move forward?' He said yes. She sent the contract that afternoon. Luna: No pushback from procurement? No 'we need to evaluate other options'? Lucas: There was a standard procurement process, but the VP had already aligned his boss and the CFO with his own numbers. The rep never had to defend a price — the buyer had already justified it to himself. Luna: It's almost like a self-closing deal. Lucas: It is. And the beautiful part is that the rep didn't need a fancy methodology or a high-pressure closing technique. She just needed the confidence to hand the pen to the buyer. Luna: Confidence, and the willingness to let go of control. Lucas: Exactly. Most reps are control freaks — they want to control the narrative, control the numbers, control the close. This tactic requires the opposite instinct: trust the buyer to tell you why they should buy. And if they can't? That's a signal too. Luna: Yeah, if they can't write a business case, maybe they're not ready to buy. Lucas: Or they're not the real decision-maker. That's another diagnostic. If the person you're talking to says 'I can't write that, it's not my job' — you might be talking to the wrong person. Luna: So it's a filter and a closer in one move. Lucas: Exactly. And this is something any rep can try tomorrow. Pick a deal that's stalled. Go to the buyer and say, 'I realize I've been pushing my own view of the value. I'd like you to tell me what you think the ROI would look like if we got this right. Could you draft a one-page business case from your perspective? I'll help you with the numbers, but I want your take first.' Luna: That's a pretty disarming ask. It's not aggressive. It's almost humble. Lucas: It is humble. And humility in sales is underrated. It shows you're not just trying to close the deal — you're trying to make sure the deal makes sense for them. Luna: And if the business case is solid, you've got a deal. If it's weak, you've got a coaching opportunity. Lucas: Exactly. Either way, you move forward. Luna: You know, this reminds me of something — if these conversations have helped you think differently about your own deals, the show stays ad-free because listeners like you chip in. If today's episode was worth a coffee to you, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small way to keep this going. And we appreciate it. Luna: Alright, back to the tactical side — what's the one thing a rep should do differently tomorrow based on this? Lucas: Identify your most stalled deal. Schedule a call with the economic buyer. And instead of presenting your own ROI, ask them to write theirs. Even if they say no, the conversation will reveal something. Luna: And if they say yes, you might just close in three weeks. Lucas: Three weeks. That's the story. So the next time you're tempted to build a perfect spreadsheet, try handing a blank page to the buyer instead. Luna: I love that. It's counterintuitive, but it works. Lucas: That's the thing about the best sales tactics — they feel wrong until you see the result.