The thing I thought I was selling turned out to be the least valuable part
I spent weeks designing a scoring system. Sophisticated, weighted, defensible. I was proud of it.
Then I put it in front of people and every single one of them said some version of: I don't care about your number, show me the evidence underneath it.
It turns out that in high stakes B2B, the output isn't the product. The auditability is the product. Nobody stakes seven or eight figures on a conclusion they can't take apart and defend to a committee. The score is a cover page. The thing they're buying is the file behind it, with a source and a date on every line, and an explicit note about what new information would change the answer.
Which was humbling, because the evidence file is the boring part. The score was the fun part.
Has anyone else had the experience of building the impressive version of a product and finding out customers wanted the tedious version? I'd like to know it's not just me.
I really liked the shift in thinking here.
It made me wonder if people weren't actually buying the conclusion at all: they were buying the ability to understand and defend it.
The score gives an answer. The evidence gives people confidence in that answer. Especially in high-stakes decisions, I think that's a very different kind of value, because it lets someone explain not just what the recommendation was, but why they trusted it.
That's exactly it, they're not buying the conclusion, they're buying the ability to defend it. The score answers what, but the evidence answers why should I trust this, and in a decision worth eight figures the second question is the only one that matters. A recommendation someone can't take apart in front of a committee is worthless to them, no matter how accurate it is. The boring, auditable part turned out to be the entire product. Glad it resonated