If They Can’t Give You the Data, Guide Them to It
Deals rarely stall because the value isn’t there. They stall because the people you’re talking to can’t access the data that proves it.
The quantified impact behind your Value Stack already exists inside the organization. The problem is that nobody has had a reason to connect it across the company.
Until now.
If you're following the Value Stack series, this article builds on Article 2, "Why Nobody Is Going to Hand You the Numbers to Build Your Business Case," and tackles three of the five reasons customers can’t get you the data.
Why Your Contact Can’t Give You the Numbers
Think about the IT director managing the infrastructure your solution is targeting.
They know when systems go offline. They know how long recovery takes. They know the operational disruption caused by outages.
What they usually don’t know is the full upstream business cost across the enterprise.
How many hours of productivity were lost? What revenue-generating workflows stalled? Which teams were impacted?
That data often lives somewhere else, owned by another department entirely.
When you ask your contact to gather it, you’re asking them to cross organizational boundaries, involve teams outside their lane, and request information they may not even know how to access.
That’s not a simple homework assignment. It’s a political and operational challenge.
This is where AEs and SEs need to stop operating as separate functions and start working together as a discovery unit.
The SE Finds the Technical Pain
The SE tracks the technical chain of cause and effect across the environment. They uncover the operational truth hiding inside friction, workarounds, and recurring failures.
SEs also have a unique advantage: peer-to-peer trust.
Engineers will often tell an SE things they would never say in a formal business meeting:
the workaround scripts they built
the alerts they ignore
the manual processes everyone quietly accepts as “just how it works”
That’s where the real operational pain usually lives.
The AE Connects Technical Pain to Business Impact
The AE takes those technical realities and translates them into business impacts:
increased cost
higher risk exposure
productivity loss
revenue impact
strategic exposure
This is where technical friction becomes quantified operational drag.
The Framework in Action
The SE starts by uncovering the operational issue:
“You mentioned the team built manual workarounds for these application failures. What does it take to maintain those?”
The customer responds:
“It takes two people about ten hours a week to keep them running.”
Now the AE begins mapping impact.
How often does this happen?
How many people are involved?
What’s the fully loaded cost of those hours?
Where else does this workaround exist?
Run the math, and the impact amplifies quickly.
What sounded like “a few hours of cleanup” becomes tens of thousands of dollars per quarter spent compensating for a system that’s supposed to work.
Once the operational cost is visible, the next step is tracing the upstream business impact.
“What systems and users are affected when those failures happen?”
Now the conversation expands.
Which workflows slow down?
Which teams get blocked?
What customer-facing processes are delayed?
What revenue-critical functions depend on this system?
At this point, you’re no longer discussing isolated technical friction. You’re uncovering the full Value Stack:
delayed orders
slower production
compliance risk
customer-impacting delays
Each has a real cost to the business. Together, they build the business case for why the customer should act.
What to Do When the Buyer Doesn’t Know
Sometimes the buyer genuinely doesn’t know the answer.
“I’m not sure.”
This is where strong discovery shifts from questioning to guided mapping.
“No problem. When this system fails, who notices first?”
If they still don’t know:
“What applications are impacted by this system?”
“Who owns the SLA?”
“Who complains the loudest?”
And suddenly, the organizational impact starts to surface.
“Finance shows up within minutes.”
“Support gets flooded.”
“Engineering grinds to a halt.”
When the Buyer Says ‘All of It’ is impacted
Sometimes the buyer gives an answer that sounds definitive but isn’t.
“All of it.”
Most sellers take that at face value. Don’t.
“Got it, but let’s prioritize the most important systems. When this happens, who feels it first?”
That question forces the buyer to anchor the impact in a real workflow instead of a vague generalization.
Become their Champion - Not A Burden
If you want access to the quantified pain your product can solve, stop asking for introductions so you can sell to another department.
Change the goal entirely.
“Has anyone ever calculated what this problem actually costs the business across operations, productivity, risk, and revenue?”
The answer is almost always no.
And that “no” is your opening.
“Let us help you build an irrefutable case for why the business needs to solve this for you, we just need to map it together. I’ll bring lunch if you can reserve the room.”
You’re no longer asking for access or handing them homework.
You’re helping the organization do something it has likely never done before: connect fragmented operational pain to measurable business impact.
This is the third LinkedIn article in a series on the Value Stack. The next article tackles what happens when your contact is too buried in operational fire drills to prioritize finding the data or doesn't understand why the effort matters.
