Thesis · The Thesis-Based Selling framework · Round one: Establish the thesis · Round two: Sell on the thesis · Falsifier · The stack · The four layers: thesis, implication, decision, product · The three tests · The six checks · Thesis memo · Thesis session · Ledger · Three kinds of pushback · Four honest moves · Vendor's thesis, buyer's theses, shared thesis · Symmetric uncertainty · The missing reference · The procurement time trap · The consumerized C-suite · The Thesis Check · Three wins
- Thesis
So in this book, a thesis is the foundational belief that a decision rests on: set down, agreed on and built on.
- The Thesis-Based Selling framework
The Thesis-Based Selling framework has one goal. It uncovers the few beliefs a customer's decision rests on, gets the room to agree on them, and builds and defends the deal on top.
It runs in two rounds of three steps.
- Round one: Establish the thesis
Round one is Establish the thesis. It is discovery, and you can do it alone.
- List. Write the decision and every reason behind it.
- Ask why. Under each reason, ask why it matters until you reach a belief.
- Write it down. One sentence for each belief, and what would prove it wrong.
- Round two: Sell on the thesis
Round two is Sell on the thesis. It is the deal itself, and you do it with other people.
- Agree. Get the people in the deal onto common ground. Your own team first, then the buyer.
- Build. Work out what follows. If the thesis is true, an implication follows from it, a decision follows from the implication, and a product comes last.
- Defend. Take the pushback, concede what is right, and keep what survives.
- Falsifier
A thesis earns it from its falsifier, the agreed statement of what would prove it wrong, which both sides can check on a date they set together.
- The stack
I call these four layers, built in this order, the stack. The rest of the book uses the word for exactly this: thesis, implication, decision, product.
- The four layers: thesis, implication, decision, product
The thesis. A claim about the world.
- The implication. What that means for this company.
- The decision. What to do first.
- The product. What to buy.
- The three tests
When you have a candidate, a sentence you think might be a thesis, run it through three tests before you take it into a room.
- Someone reasonable could disagree with it.
- It stays true whoever wins the deal, and whatever product is chosen.
- It names what would prove it wrong.
- The six checks
Put the three tests and the three demands of the room together, and you have six checks for any thesis before it goes in front of a customer.
The first three checks are about the sentence itself, and you can run them at your desk. The last three are about what happens when the sentence meets a room, and they are the ones sellers skip.
- Thesis memo
What carries it is the thesis, written as a buying document.
In the committee's file it becomes something else: a record of what bet the company is placing, why, and under what conditions the bet succeeds or fails. I call that document a thesis memo.
- Thesis session
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.
- Ledger
Keep a record, one line per challenge: the thesis, the date, who challenged it, their argument, the kind of challenge, and what happened. There are four outcomes. It held. It held with a boundary. It was revised. It was retired.
- Three kinds of pushback
Almost every challenge to a thesis is one of three.
- "That is not true." A challenge on the facts.
- "True in general, not for us." A challenge on scope.
- "True, not yet." A challenge on timing.
- Four honest moves
So when a thesis is under pressure, you have four honest moves. Defend it, if it is true, with the evidence and the falsifier. Bound it, narrowing the scope honestly, as the hospital buyer helped you do. Concede it in the open, if the buyer is right, and repair it where they can see. Or walk away, if the buyer's theses and yours do not overlap and the conversation about the thesis cannot move them.
- Vendor's thesis, buyer's theses, shared thesis
The vendor's thesis. Every product is a bet.
- The buyer's theses. The buyer holds beliefs about their business and its future before any vendor arrives: about their data, their people, their regulators, their market.
- The shared thesis. The short list both sides agree on, from which the decision follows.
- Symmetric uncertainty
Neither side has seen the movie to the end. I call that symmetric uncertainty: not equal ignorance about everything, but equal uncertainty about the one thing that matters most.
- The missing reference
What is usually missing is one kind of evidence: a customer like this buyer, who made this decision, on this horizon, and ran it long enough to report the result.
- The procurement time trap
How do you make a durable decision about a technology that changes faster than your buying process? I call this the procurement time trap, and it is the second of the three shifts the Note at the front named.
- The consumerized C-suite
The executives who sign, the C-suite of chief executive, chief financial officer, chief operating officer and the rest, now use the technology themselves, at home, before anyone has bought it for them. I call that the consumerized C-suite, and it changes the meeting more than any feature on your roadmap.
- The Thesis Check
MEDDIC tells you whether a deal is real. The Thesis Check tells you whether the ground under it is. Run both. Score each line 0 for no, 1 for partly, and 2 for yes with something written to show for it: a page, a quote, an email.
- Three wins
It helps to name the three things a seller can win, because they are easy to confuse and they are not worth the same.
- The agreement. The buyer accepts the thesis.
- The transaction. The buyer signs with you. Only this one pays a quota, and it is decided at the top of the stack, by everything the previous section listed.