Introduction

You are brilliant and clever, and just the right amount of empathic. You work for the right firm that partners with all the best clients, and your products and services? Well, where shall we start? Perhaps with how AI-enabled, well-priced, and scalable you are.

Not cutting through? Let’s try this approach:

You are an industry thought leader, and your company has won so many awards.

“We’re the best place to work in Tulsa…”,

…or, Manchester, not to mention you are on Fortune’s Top 1000 Fastest-Growing Companies list, for the second straight year, oh, and yes, we have raised over $15 million in capital.

So you ask:

“Why do you have to pick on Tulsa, or Manchester, and what’s not great about recognition and working capital?”

I’m not picking; those are all great things to have checked off your list of assets, but guess what… your customers and clients don’t care.

I’ve been itching to have this conversation for some time now. But what convinced me was rewatching a recent short clip of Brian Tracy talking about what really matters.

I made my case in Volume 1 of the Discovering Why newsletter that Impact and Outcomes are not the vital focus area when going about our craft, but I was referring to our own outcomes.

Results now are a different matter altogether when it comes to what you are creating and articulating to your audience, clients, and stakeholders. As Tracy clearly states:

“We should spend 90% of our time building a vision for the future”

…with those we seek to develop partnerships with, showing how their lives will be made better, easier, and, frankly, transformed.

“People don’t care what your product is. They don’t care about you, your company, or its background. The only thing they care about is this: What does it do for me? What do I get? What’s in it for me?”, Brian Tracy

Let me make a confession,

To achieve the best outcomes for your clients…

It is the pattern.

Take a small, risky window of opportunity. Refuse to play small. Bet on a bold outcome instead of a safe one.

I will share this story from an earlier time in my career, when I was at SPSS.

Walking Into Len’s Office at Harris Interactive

Picture the scene.

Harris Interactive is “all in” on SurveyCraft. It runs their business. Teams know it. Clients rely on it. Keyboard shortcuts in that software are basically muscle memory at this point.

Then SPSS acquires SurveyCraft, an Australian survey-hosting platform developed by a really smart guy, Jen Meinecke.

For Len Bayer, Chief Data Sciences and Technology Officer at Harris, this is not a simple vendor announcement. It is an existential threat dressed up as a press release.

The questions under the question start piling up in his head:

• Will SPSS keep investing in this platform or convert and fold the SurveyCraft customer base into a new platform called Dimensions, which was still percolating?
• Will Harris Interactive still be able to call Jens Meinecke and say, “We need this specific customization for our market,” or will that become a ticket in a faceless queue?

On paper, this is a conversation about a survey tool. In reality, it is a conversation about control, risk, and the future viability of Harris Interactive’s research operating system.

That is the first big lesson for anyone selling insights or tech:

“The product is never the product. The real product is the client’s sense of control over their future.”, J. Whaley

and…

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”, Teddy Roosevelt

Not only was this the first time I would ever meet Len, but I was also briefed in advance that he was not pleased with the announcement and was unlikely to be swayed to jump on the “Vision 2000” (Dimensions) bandwagon.

Here is what I didn’t do that day:

I did not walk in and say, “Let me tell you about our feature roadmap.”

I did not lead with price sheets, license tiers, and a bullet list of enhancements coming in Version 3.1.2

I am still grateful to this day for my early IBM career training, which spanned over a year and drilled and instilled the essentials of dealing with the human side of business success. The art of communication: Two Ears-One Mouth (listen more than speak), repeat and clarify what you heard, and if not an expert, then be an ally, a resource, and a problem solver.

Instead, I listened to what Len’s actual concerns were:

• Losing direct access to Jens (the principal developer)
• Losing the ability to customize SurveyCraft to Harris’s unique business model
• Losing scalability as Harris grew and made acquisitions

With Len beginning to warm to the idea that someone was actually listening, I closed our initial meeting with this promise: that I would think about the situation, articulate his concerns to our team, and come back to him with a plan to address them.

Getting back home to Connecticut that night after the quick trip up to Rochester, NYC, I decided to put the problem to my subconscious and sleep on it. The next day, I floated this idea to the SPSS senior management team, which would essentially be a one-time purchase of a SurveyCraft license with source code rights.

We designed a one-time, all-you-can-eat source code arrangement that did three very un-software things:

1. Gave Harris autonomy. They were not at the mercy of a future roadmap meeting at another company. They had the code.
2. Protected their core workflows. Jens could keep working with them, and they could keep shaping the tool around their market.
3. Scaled with their ambition. As they grew and acquired new businesses, they were not punished by per-seat or per-project thinking. The structure anticipated growth instead of fearing it.

The transaction landed in the seven-figure range and, at the time, became the largest single SPSS customer deal ever signed. It more than recouped the price SPSS paid for the original SurveyCraft acquisition, and it relieved SPSS of the responsibility to continue supporting and updating the non-strategic platform for its biggest and most demanding customer.

All that is super cool. But the significant part is this:

The structure of the deal reestablished trust and goodwill. It created a platform for more business in advanced analytics and data mining. It turned “vendor risk” into “strategic partner.”

I was not selling code. SPSS was selling a future in which Harris could grow without asking for permission.

What This Has To Do With Selling Insights Today

Fast forward 25 years.

We have AI everywhere, platforms promising to be “your single source of truth,” dashboards that sparkle, and generative tools that will apparently do everything except empty the dishwasher.

Yet clients still hesitate.

They worry about:

• Getting locked into a platform that stops evolving in the direction their market is going
• Having their core insights workflows shaped by someone else’s product roadmap
• Buying something that looks great in the demo, then turns into technical debt or shelfware

This is what this feels like to the buyer

Have we really just upgraded SurveyCraft to an “AI-enabled, cloud native, integrated insights architecture,” yet the underlying anxiety remains the same?

Which means the underlying opportunity is the same too – Supped up, and watered down.

If we want to sell insights and insights technology in this environment, we must not rely on peddling capabilities. We must step up by offering:

• Autonomy: How does this give the client more control, not less
• Adaptability: How does this evolve with their business, not just with your releases
• Scale without punishment: How does success with your solution make their economics better, not worse

Let’s turn that into something practical.

Sell Outcomes, Not Artifacts

The Sundance application I spoke about in Volume 1 of this newsletter series was not about submitting a perfect film. It was about creating outcomes for our audiences looking to feel entertained and opening them up to different human insights that were perhaps lying dormant or did not yet exist. Growth.

The Harris deal was not about a perfect contract. It was about creating the conditions for future growth and control.

In the same way, when you sell insights or tech, the thing in your slide deck is not the thing the client is really buying.

They are buying:

• Fewer career-limiting decisions
• Faster conviction when the data is noisy
• Political air cover when they propose something bold
• The ability to say to their CEO, “Yes, we can answer that,” and mean it

So:

• Do not say: “We have a flexible, modular, mobile-first, AI-enhanced platform.”
• Do say: “Here is how your team will turn three-week questions into three-day answers, and here is what unlocks for your product roadmap, your media spend, and your investor narrative.”

Features are footnotes. The story is the outcome.

Design Deals That Match The Story

The all-you-can-eat source code deal was not a gimmick. It was the structural expression of the Harris-SPSS partnership story:

“We believe in your growth, and we are willing to put skin in the game.”

If your commercial structure contradicts your story, clients feel it immediately.

If you say you believe in collaboration, but every extra user is a painful upcharge, trust me, they will feel it.
If you say you are committed to a long-term partnership, but your contract looks like a short-term land grab, they will feel that too.

Some deal structures that can embody a bolder story in insights and tech:

1. Growth-aligned pricing
2. Autonomy clauses
3. Co-creation investments

You are not just negotiating price. You are architecting how trust will feel 18 months from now.

A Simple Selling Framework For Insights: Why → Future → Structure

Consider this simple pattern of cue cards in your next client conversation.

1. Start with WHY

Ask the questions that get under the project plot:

• What are you afraid will happen if you do nothing?
• What decision will this work really influence?
• Where do you feel boxed in by your current tools or partners?

You are listening for the Len moment: the thing your client is apprehensive about, underneath the procurement script.

2. Paint the FUTURE

Describe a future where that specific anxiety is not only solved, but turned into an advantage.

• “Today you are waiting three weeks for answers your CEO wants in three days. In the future, when we design together, your team is walking into that meeting with live data and an impactful narrative ready to shake things up.”
• “Today, you feel locked into methods that clients are starting to roll their eyes at. In the future, your team is known for combining behavioral data, AI, and human stories into recommendations, exposing blind spots & organizational biases, and delivering a message that people quote in the boardroom.”

Could you make it vivid? A little humor helps in this proposal trailer:

In a world where…

…Right now, your tracking study is like that treadmill in the garage. Expensive, technically functional, and mostly something you feel guilty about.

There is only one team, bold and ready, who will deliver the new vision of a better future…

Experience Better Clarity, Better Scalability, with a sense of freedom and confidence to grow your business, enabled by Insights with Impact.

3. Then show the STRUCTURE

Only now do you bring in the:

• Platform capabilities
• Service model
• Deal structure

And you frame them as, “Here is how we make that future your default reality,” not “Here is what our product team thought was cool last quarter.”

Questions To Take Into Your Next Pitch

If you want something actionable you can grab immediately, try taking these into your next client or prospect conversation:

• “What can you absolutely not afford to lose in this transformation?” That is your Jens and SurveyCraft moment.
• “If this worked better than you hope, what would be possible in 12 to 24 months that is not possible today?” That is your Sundance outcome.
• “Where do today’s contracts or tools make you feel like you are renting your own future?” That tells you where to design more autonomy into your offer.
• “If we structured this in a way that rewarded your success, what would that look like to you?” That opens the door to all-you-can-eat style creativity.

Then listen. Really listen. The most sophisticated thing in the room is not the AI model; it is the question that uncovers the real fear and the real ambition.