Same Product. Different Promise.

The buyers asked “How?”

At Piano, we sold subscription software to publishers. Most deals followed a familiar script. A mid-level manager wanted a paywall, and we competed on features and price. A standard US contract was worth about $160,000 over two years.

But a paywall wasn't the problem keeping publishing executives awake. Google and Facebook had taken much of the advertising money that once paid for journalism. Publishers needed new revenue and a stronger direct relationship with their readers.

We started taking a different idea into those conversations:

“Don’t monetize your content. Monetize your loyal audience.”

That wasn't just a better way to describe a paywall. It challenged the assumption behind buying one. If the business is built around selling access to articles, you ask how much content to put behind a paywall. If the business is built around loyal readers, you ask what those relationships could make possible. Paid access might be part of the answer, but it no longer defines the opportunity.

The executives didn't ask us to compare features. They asked, “How?” They recognized their business problem and wanted to explore a different way to solve it. Our software could support that ambition, but the ambition was bigger than the software.

Two salespeople I coached took that idea into their markets. Within weeks of each other, they closed these deals:

Same product. Different belief about the problem. Different conversation. Different size of deal.

These were two wins, not proof that every deal would change. And larger contracts bring larger obligations. But they showed me something important: when a customer sees you as a partner in solving a consequential business challenge, the basis for choosing you can change.

What the middle looks like

Consider a SaaS company that grows by becoming very good at what its category already does. It adds features, builds integrations, hires more salespeople and expands its reach. Customers buy, so the company keeps going.

Then the buyer's conversation narrows. One competitor offers a broader platform. Another offers a simpler product at a lower price. Everyone claims to solve the same problem. Buyers compare features, implementation effort and discounts. Our growing company can still win, but it has to work harder to explain why it should.

That's what I mean by the middle. It isn't a revenue range or a verdict on any particular company. It's a competitive position: substantial enough to have something to defend, but without a distinctive reason for customers to choose it on terms it helped establish.

The trap is that doing more of what's already working may deepen that position. Better execution can make you a stronger competitor in the same comparison. It doesn't necessarily change the comparison.

The answer you inherited

Every software category comes with assumptions: what the problem is, what counts as a solution, who buys it and how alternatives should be judged. Those assumptions are convenient. They also quietly make strategic choices for you.

Listen to a buyer's request. “We need a paywall.” “We need a better dashboard.” “We need more leads.” Each might be perfectly sensible. But each is already an answer to a problem the buyer has framed.

At Piano, taking “we need a paywall” at face value put us into a paywall comparison. Asking what the publisher was really trying to build opened a different conversation. The decisive step wasn't finding a larger problem. Everyone knew publishers needed revenue. It was having a different, credible point of view about how they should pursue it.

Early growth can hide the cost of accepting the category's answer. Revenue rises. You hire and build around the offer. Each investment is reasonable. Together, they make the original assumptions harder to question. By the time growth flattens, changing course is more expensive.

“We have product-market fit. Why change?”

Because product-market fit proves people will buy your answer. It doesn't prove it's the most valuable answer you could offer. It doesn't tell you how large the opportunity might become, or why customers will choose you once competitors can offer something similar.

And growth is often the best time to investigate. You have customers who will talk to you, revenue to fund experiments and fewer organizational commitments built around one way of selling. Wait until growth stalls, and those advantages may be smaller.

That's what I mean by evolve before you scale. Don't abandon what works. Question whether it's the right thing to build the next stage of your company around.

Find an answer worth scaling

Start with the customer's request, but don't stop there. What are they trying to achieve? What happens if they fail? Who carries that cost? And, crucially, what are they taking for granted about how the problem should be solved?

A useful strategic idea does three things. It addresses a consequential problem, offers a distinctive explanation of how to solve it, and gives your company a credible role in making that explanation real. A bigger promise without those last two is just a bigger slogan.

At Piano, the alternative wasn't “we can help you grow revenue.” Any vendor could say that. It was a particular belief: stop treating individual pieces of content as the main thing to monetize; start thinking about the economic potential of the loyal audience you've earned.

Not every company finds its next answer through a reframe. Sometimes it comes from combining capabilities customers currently buy separately. Sometimes it comes from changing how a solution is bought, delivered or paid for. Salesforce challenged the old model for acquiring and running enterprise CRM. HubSpot built a business around a different approach to attracting customers. What matters is not the type of move. It's whether the move changes why a customer chooses you.

You can begin testing the opportunity with three unfinished sentences. Ask a customer executive to complete them:

1. “This matters because…”
2. “We haven't solved it because…”
3. “We would act if…”

The first reveals the stakes. The second exposes what existing answers have missed. The third hints at what a credible alternative would have to make possible. They're a starting point for investigation, not a substitute for testing whether other customers share the problem or believe your proposed answer.

Make the company deliver it

The two Piano salespeople showed that the idea could travel beyond the person who introduced it. But that's not the same as changing the company.

A new idea can change a few sales long before it changes a company.

The product may not need to change on day one. Eventually, though, the organization must be capable of fulfilling the new promise. Sales has to diagnose an executive's business challenge rather than simply respond to a feature request. Product has to make choices that support the intended result. Customer teams need to help buyers act on the idea, not just adopt the software. Finance and leadership need to understand the economics and risks of a different kind of relationship.

If sales promises a business outcome but delivery is organized only to switch on features, the customer meets two different companies. And when the salesperson who made the breakthrough leaves, the old system often wins.

Here's the test: Can another team recognize the opportunity, make the case and deliver on it without the original champion in the room? If not, you have promising deals, but not yet a repeatable strategy.

That requires evidence. Record what customers originally believed, why their thinking changed, what they committed to and what happened afterward. Then use what you learn to change the proposition, product priorities and delivery model. A strategic idea becomes an advantage only when the business learns how to prove and fulfill it.

Start with one customer

Here's the question I'd put to any SaaS CEO: If you executed today's strategy perfectly, would customers have a stronger reason to choose you—or would you simply become a bigger supplier of something they can buy elsewhere?

Don't begin with a strategy offsite. Begin with an executive at one of your best customers. Ask the three questions above. Listen for the business challenge behind the product request, and for assumptions everyone has stopped questioning.

If you hear a problem more consequential than the one you're selling against today, you haven't found a new strategy yet. You've found something worth investigating before you commit to scaling the existing one.

This is the starting question. For the fuller argument—and the ways a company can act on it—read Evolve Before You Scale.