Adapted from Chapter 8, Agree with Your Own Team Before the Customer, of Thesis-Based Selling. The words are the book’s, shortened for the web. Page 151 in the reader
Maya is an account executive. Daniel is the sales engineer on her deals. They are forty minutes into a call with Priya, the chief data officer of a regional insurer, and Priya asks the question she came to ask.
"Can this answer questions about our claims data and get them right?"
Maya answers first. "Yes. Customers are seeing very strong accuracy."
Daniel waits a beat and adds, "It depends on how the claims data is modeled, and on what you count as right."
Priya writes something down. The call goes on, friendly, and ends on time. Afterward Maya is annoyed that Daniel undercut her, and Daniel is annoyed that Maya promised something he will have to deliver. Priya tells her team that the vendor does not seem to know what its own product does.
Nobody lied. Maya answered from her picture of the truth, which is made of outcomes. Daniel answered from his, which is made of conditions. In a mature market the two pictures would have been pulled together by a shared stock of evidence: the last twenty deployments, which both of them had seen. Without that stock, each one fell back on the instinct of the role.
Why the seller and the engineer disagree
The account executive is paid when the customer commits, so the account executive speaks in results and dates. The sales engineer is the one who has to make it work on the customer's data, so the sales engineer speaks in conditions and limits. A company needs both instincts. A customer needs to hear them as one voice.
When they come out as two, the customer does a quick calculation. If the people selling this cannot agree on what it does, the risk of buying it is higher than the slide says. The JOLT Effect research from Chapter 4 found that fear of a mistake is what stalls most deals, and a visible gap between seller and engineer feeds that fear directly.
The usual fix is a messaging document. Marketing writes the approved answer, and both people memorize it. That holds for one question. On the second follow-up the memorized line runs out, and each person goes back to instinct.
Forty-five minutes, one page
The fix that holds is to argue it out beforehand. Before the account plan and before the deck, the seller and the engineer sit down for forty-five minutes with one page. I call it a thesis session, and it has three steps.
- Write separately, then compare. Each person writes three things they believe are true about this market. No products. Five minutes, no talking. Then put the two lists side by side. Where they match, you have a candidate. Where they differ, you have found the thing the customer would have found for you.
- Attack each other's list. The engineer attacks the seller's list. Is this true on real data? Under what conditions? What would break it? Then the seller attacks the engineer's list. Suppose it is true. Why would a chief financial officer care? What does it change?
- Keep what survives, and write down what you do not know. A thesis has to hold up on real data and matter to the business. Three to five will make it through. Agree on the exact words. Then list the questions where the honest answer is "we have not seen enough to say." Agree that both of you will say exactly that.
The page that comes out is short: three to five theses, the evidence for each, what would prove each wrong, and the list of unknowns. Both names go at the bottom.
A thesis has to be technically true and commercially meaningful.
Who says what in the room
The seller states the thesis and what it means for the customer's business. The engineer defends it with the evidence, the limits, and the conditions under which it would fail. Either one may concede a point, and when one does, the other backs it.
Never correct each other in front of the customer.
Rewind the call with Priya. This time Maya and Daniel have agreed on a thesis, the fifth from the last chapter: what you give AI is worth more than what AI gives you. Priya asks whether it will get claims questions right.
Maya says, "We think the honest answer starts with what you give it. Daniel, do you want to take that?"
Daniel says, "It will be as right as the definitions and examples it is given. For the questions where you already have a known right answer, we can measure it together in the first two weeks, and I would not trust any number before that. Which claims questions have an answer you would stake a decision on?"
Same two people, same product. Priya hears one voice, and she has been handed a way to find out for herself.
The phrases that carry it
With the customer, in the first meeting:
- "Before I show you anything, here are three things we believe are true about where this is going. Which ones do you not buy?"
- "Is that how your leadership sees it, or how you see it?"
- "Who in your company would push back on this one?"
- "If this held, what would you stop doing?"
When agreement goes wrong
The customer nods at everything. A buyer who agrees with all of your theses is not agreeing. They are being polite, or they have not engaged. Ask the question that breaks the politeness: "If you had to cross one of these out, which would it be?" Most buyers will cross one out, and the reason is your next discovery note.
The account team quietly disagrees. Sometimes the thesis session ends with the seller and the engineer still not quite aligned, and both sign anyway because the meeting is tomorrow. Do not sign. Write the disagreement down as one of the unknowns and agree that you will both say so. An unknown said honestly is far less damaging than a disagreement the customer finds for you.
The customer will find the gap between your seller and your engineer. Find it first, in a room where it costs nothing.
What to do this week
- Book forty-five minutes with the person on the other side of your deals, the engineer if you sell or the seller if you are the engineer. Call it a thesis session, and book it before the account plan and the deck, not after.
- Sign the page. Put both names at the bottom. A signed page is a commitment that you will say the same thing in the room, including "we have not seen enough to say."
- Use it once. Open your next customer meeting from the page, and note which thesis drew the first objection. Bring that note to your next session; it is the best feedback the page will get.