We Keep Solving the Wrong Problem
I've had a little distance from the day-to-day lately.
And honestly? It's been clarifying.
Because when you step back from the grind of deals and demos and internal reviews, you start noticing things that are hard to see when you're in it. Patterns that were always there, just easier to ignore when you're moving fast.
The one I can't stop thinking about: we've gotten really good at selling what's possible. We haven't gotten nearly as good at selling what's actually needed.
And right now, in this particular moment, that gap is wider than it's ever been.
The AI problem nobody's talking about
Here's what's happening out in the market.
Everyone is racing to add AI to everything. Agents. Automation. Workflows that do in seconds what used to take hours. And genuinely a lot of it is incredible. The capability is real.
But there's a thing that happens when everything is impressive: you stop asking whether it's relevant.
So customers are sitting in demos watching AI do 15 things at once, and somewhere in their heads they're thinking, “okay, but we haven't even fixed the thing that breaks every month.” We're still on spreadsheets for half of this. We still don't have a clean data pipeline. And you're showing me, autonomous agents?
We're skipping steps. And customers feel it, even when they can't articulate it.
The deal stalls. The pilot drags. You start hearing "this is great, but..." and that's the tell. That's the gap showing itself.
Features aren't the problem. Sequence is.
I want to be careful here because I'm not saying AI is overhyped or that the advanced stuff doesn't matter. It does.
Most customers don't need transformation on day one. They need a win. Something that actually works, that their team adopts, that they can point to in 90 days and say, “yeah, that was worth it.”
And right now, a lot of us are walking in with the entire menu when they just want to know what's good.
You've got a customer whose processes are no longer working, whose team is doing manual work they hate, who's flying blind on reporting. We're demoing the most sophisticated version of the product because it's the most impressive thing we can show.
It's not a feature problem. It's a sequence problem. And it's easy to fall into because the pressure to differentiate is real, and leading with the advanced stuff feels like a form of differentiation.
But to the customer, it often just feels like noise.
The only question that actually matters early
Before any of it, before the demo, before the solution design, before you even think about which features to show, there's one thing that changes everything:
Do you understand their problem well enough to explain it back to them better than they can explain it themselves?
Not "what's your use case." That gets you a surface answer.
The real questions are slower. Where does this actually break? What happens if it stays broken next quarter, next year? Who's most affected, and what's it costing them? What have they already tried? Why did it not work? What is giving them the Sunday scaries?
That's the work. It's not glamorous, and it doesn't make for a great LinkedIn post, but it's what makes everything else land.
Because when you've done that work, you're not showing them what's possible. You're showing them a mirror. And that hits completely differently.
The sellers winning right now aren't the flashiest ones
I've watched enough deals to know this is true.
The reps winning consistently aren't the ones with the deepest product knowledge or the most polished demos. They're the ones who slow down early. Who stay ruthlessly anchored to the problem. Why resist the urge to show the cool thing when the relevant thing is actually simpler?
They don't come in with the full roadmap. They come in with a clear point of view on where to start and a path that actually makes sense for the customer's current state.
That's what builds trust. Not the AI. Not the feature set. The judgment to know what matters first.
A quick gut-check before your next call
Three questions. Just these three:
What's the actual problem, not the category, the specific thing?
Who feels it most, and what does it cost them when it's not solved?
What does a win look like in 90 days, in their words?
If you can't answer those cleanly, more demo prep won't help you.
The bottom line
The market is full of impressive opportunities right now. AI is everywhere, the demos are getting better, and the feature lists keep growing.
But the teams quietly pulling away aren't winning impressively. They're winning on relevance.
They show up understanding the problem. They prescribe a starting point that makes sense. They earn the right to show the advanced stuff later because they proved first that they actually get it.
That's the job. Always has been. Just harder to remember when everything around you is telling you to show more, move faster, and lead with the future.
Sometimes the advantage is just being the one who slows down and asks the right question first.
