Most B2B pitches are written for the buyer you imagined, not the one who picks up the phone. On one of our campaigns, the call data showed that gap clearly.
The pitch was built around a single ERP. We assumed most prospects would already run that system, so the integration section would land on day one. It didn’t. About one call in nine came from companies on a different platform, mostly mid-market accounting tools. On those calls, the integration section didn’t just fall flat. It made the prospect stop and ask whether we could work with their setup at all, and that question drained the momentum from the rest of the call.
The fix wasn’t a new script. It was positioning. We now describe the product as ERP-agnostic from the first minute, and we treat the system question as something to answer early instead of defending late. When a prospect runs something outside our core set, our technical lead confirms compatibility before the meeting goes ahead. That one change removed a whole category of objection.
The second lesson was about naming. The category label we first used carried baggage. Prospects who had heard that term from a competitor had already formed a view of what it meant, and many of those views were negative or simply wrong. Reps were spending the first few minutes of each call correcting an assumption instead of discussing the prospect’s problem.
So we stopped leading with that label and started leading with the job it does: digitizing payments. “Digitize payments” describes an outcome the buyer already wants, which is moving money faster, cutting manual steps, and keeping cleaner records. It doesn’t ask them to file the product under a category they’ve already decided about. The conversation starts with their process instead of our vocabulary.
In practice, the opener now names the workflow problem, such as paying suppliers and reconciling payments, rather than the product category. The system question comes up during discovery, not after the demo. And if a prospect uses a different term for the product, reps mirror their language and move on instead of defending ours.
Teams often assume a sharper label does the selling. In our calls, the label mostly set the tone before any value had been discussed. Being specific about the buyer’s problem did the real work.
If you’re reviewing your pitch this week, check two things. First, list every system your prospects actually run, and ask whether your pitch quietly assumes one of them. Second, read your product name the way a stranger would, and ask what they already believe about it before you say a word.