'Nice to have' is a positioning failure, not a buyer problem
Most SaaS leadership teams spend a lot of energy on one question: why us? We build battlecards, comparison pages and feature grids. We know exactly how we beat the vendor in the next column.
But "why us" is only one of the questions buyers ask, and it isn't the first. Before anyone compares vendors, the buying group has to agree there's a problem worth solving.
6sense's 2026 Buyer Experience Report found that 56.4% of buyers say agreeing on the value of the category is harder than choosing a vendor. Your buyer's hardest decision isn't choosing you. It's agreeing that the problem is worth solving at all, and that now is the time to solve it.
If your story skips that step, you're not losing to competitors. You're losing to "not this quarter".
The competitor that wasn't on our battlecard
I once worked at a data analytics company with a genuinely brilliant product. Our buyer, usually the head of data analytics, loved it, yet getting it bought was a constant struggle.
The problem was the CFO, who looked at the platform and saw a nice-to-have. Why pay for software when people and spreadsheets already did the job? So the purchase was postponed. Then postponed again. Then something else on the list got the budget.
When I joined, the company was fixated on rival tools in the same space. It had a sharp answer to "how are you different from them?". It had no answer to "how are you different from what we do today?", which was manual work by junior analysts in spreadsheets. And it couldn't say why now.
The real competitor wasn't another vendor. It was the status quo, and the status quo had the budget, the habits and the CFO on its side.
Why "nice to have" is a SaaS positioning problem, not the buyer's
It's tempting to blame the buyer. The CFO doesn't get it. Priorities shifted. The timing was wrong.
The data says stalls are common. 6sense found that stalled evaluations last 8.6 months on average. The main reasons are changing priorities (29%), implementation concerns (26%), unclear ROI (24%) and difficulty reaching consensus (23%).
Look at three of those again. Changing priorities means something else looked more urgent. Unclear ROI means nobody made the cost of doing nothing concrete. Difficulty reaching consensus means the buying group never agreed the problem mattered. Each one is a "why change, why now" failure, and that story is yours to tell.
Here's the point I keep making to every leadership team I work with. When you compete for budget, you don't just compete with the budget for tools like yours. You compete with everything else the company could do with that money: a new hire, another project, or simply keeping things as they are. "Nice to have" is what buyers call a product whose vendor hasn't won that argument.
The buying group has the same problem you do
In a recent blog about the 25-word test, I wrote about what happens when Product, Sales and Marketing describe your company in different ways. Buying groups have exactly the same problem.
6sense found that 71% of buying groups start with two or more conflicting vendor preferences, and the average group has about 10 people. Your champion is trying to get ten people with different priorities to agree on a problem before anyone talks about you.
And they're doing much of it without you. 94% of buyers hold prior perceptions of vendors before an evaluation even begins. On average, buyers contact vendors 59.2% of the way through a 10.3-month buying cycle. By the time you're on a call, the "why change" conversation has either happened without you or stalled without you.
So everything that travels ahead of you, from your website to the slides your champion forwards, has to argue for change. Not just for your product.
Why now first, why us second
My rule for every sales pitch I build is simple: answer "why now" before "why us". If the buyer doesn't see the problem as relevant now, they won't explore further, and your differentiation never gets heard.
6sense makes a similar recommendation: give champions separate arguments for the category and for the vendor, plus ungated ROI and business-case material. In practice, your champion needs two arguments:
The case for change. What the problem is, what it costs today, and why it can't wait. It doesn't need your product name. This is what your champion takes to the CFO.
The case for you. Once change is agreed: why your approach, why your company, and what makes you different.
Most pitch decks I see jump straight to the second argument. They assume the first is obvious. To the person who loves your product, it is. To the CFO, it isn't.
This is a CEO decision, not a messaging tweak. Choosing the alternative you position against sets your category, your value story and your pricing. At that data analytics company, naming "people and spreadsheets" as the real alternative would have changed the whole conversation: from comparing features with rivals to comparing our product with the way the work was done today.
Run the "why now" test with your leadership team
This takes an hour. Ask your CEO, and your Product, Sales and Marketing leaders, to do steps 1 to 4 separately, without conferring.
Name the real alternative. If a buyer doesn't choose us, what do they actually do instead? List the status quo first and rival vendors second.
Spell out the cost of doing nothing. What does staying as they are cost the buyer in money, time or risk, and who feels it?
Write down "why now". What has changed, or is changing, that makes this a priority this year rather than next?
Only then, write "why us" in 25 words.
Compare the answers. Do you agree on the alternative? Could your champion take steps 2 and 3 into a CFO meeting without mentioning your product?
Audit what buyers see before they call you. Check your homepage, the first five slides of your pitch deck and your battlecards. How much is "why change" and how much is "why us"? Is your ROI and business-case material ungated?
If step 4 is easy and steps 2 and 3 are hard, you've found your "nice to have" problem.
A stalled deal is waiting for a better argument
There's good news in the data too. 6sense found that 77.9% of buyers expect to revisit a paused purchase within 12 months. A stalled deal isn't always a dead deal. It's waiting for someone to make the case for change. Make sure that someone is you.
Let's talk about your "why now"
If your leadership team ran the test and the answers didn't line up, or you suspect your real competitor isn't on your battlecard, book an Office Hours session with me.
It's a private 45-minute session where you get an independent perspective on one product marketing or go-to-market challenge. That might be positioning and differentiation, communicating a complex product, or aligning Product, Marketing and Sales around one clear commercial story. We'll focus on one priority, and I'll follow up with two or three practical observations or recommendations.
No preparation is needed and there's no obligation to buy anything. Sessions are limited to one per company, with up to three participants.
Sources
6sense, 2026 B2B Buyer Experience Report, as summarised by Agile Brand Guide (3 Nov 2026): Beyond discovery: realigning B2B go-to-market for the informed buyer in 2026. Secondary summary; sample size not stated.
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