The person who feels the pain and the person who controls the budget are almost never the same human
This came out of feedback on my last post and it broke something open for me.
I'd been aiming at the people who experience the problem directly. Obvious, right? Except the people who feel it usually have no budget line, and often already employ someone whose job is to solve it. To them I'm competing with their own staff.
The person who actually pays is the one who has to defend a decision to someone above them. The one who signs off, or who gets blamed when it goes wrong months later. That person needs an independent read they didn't produce themselves, precisely because they have to hand it upward.
Which means my product isn't information. It's ammunition for an internal argument.
Has anyone else had to make this switch mid build? How did you find the person with the scar rather than the person with the job title?
The switch happened for us mid-build too, and the shortcut that worked was asking prospects to walk me through the last time the problem actually cost them something. The person with the scar can answer that in one sentence with a date and a dollar figure. The person with the job title answers with process talk. The second tell was who kept asking about implementation and who kept asking about what the report would say to their boss. How do you handle it when the person with the scar isn't the one who signs?
The two tells you named are gold, one sentence with a date and a dollar figure versus process talk, and who asks about implementation versus who asks what the report says to their boss. That's a cleaner filter than anything I had. On your question, when the person with the scar isn't the one who signs: honestly that's the exact knot I'm still working. My current instinct is the scarred person becomes my champion and hands the evidence file upward to whoever signs, so I build the deliverable to survive that handoff rather than trying to reach the signer directly. But I'd like to know how you've handled it, because I don't think I've solved it yet. How'd it play out for you?
The champion handoff idea holds up. The scarred person carries proof the signer never felt, so the deliverable has to read as evidence, not a pitch. What worked for me was making the champion look good in front of the signer, the report answers the boss question directly, not the scar question. The one thing I still get wrong is timing, if the champion hands it up during a calm week it dies, so I try to attach it to a moment that already has the signer's attention. How are you planning to time that handoff.
The timing point is the part I hadn't solved and you just named it, a calm week hand off dies no matter how good the file is. For mine the moment that already has the signer's attention is the deal itself: the investment committee review, the financing close, the point where capital's about to be committed. Those are calendar events, not moods, which is what makes them attachable. So instead of hoping the champion picks a good week, I want the evidence file to be the thing that's expected in the deal packet at that specific gate. And you nailed the deeper shift too, the report has to answer the boss question, not the scar question. The champion feels the scar, but the signer only cares whether they'll get blamed, so the deliverable has to speak to the second person even though the first one is the one who forwards it. How do you handle it when the champion's read of what the boss wants is wrong, do you talk to the signer directly at any point, or stay fully behind the champion