What is the value of expertise before someone buys your product?

Most companies these days spend an enormous amount of time – and surprising amounts of money – refining their value proposition.

But they could sort their value proposition out quickly with the most commercially valuable question of all.

What can our customers not currently see that they need to see?

I think every CEO, founder and leadership team should answer that question. Because that’s where differentiated conversations begin.

Customers don’t buy expertise.

They buy what expertise allows them to see. Before anyone experiences your product… Before they use your service… Before they become a customer…

The only value you can really create in the first or early conversation, is helping them understand something they didn’t understand five minutes earlier.

That might be

• a risk
• an opportunity
• a misconception
• a better standard
• a hidden cost
• an emerging capability
• a false assumption

You’re changing the way they see their own world. That’s the first sale.

We started calling these Customer Blind Spots.

The phrase came almost by accident. For years we’ve asked companies this question.

What can you see that your customers typically can’t?

Or

What do your customers need to know that you know, but they don’t know

Then we re-named the exercise The Customer’s Blind Spots, and one client came back twenty minutes later with a clean, clear list of half a dozen points. And suddenly the light came on.

Every industry has them.

Customers are experts in their own business. They are not experts in yours. Yes, you do need to understand the customer’s “problems” or pain, but there’s far more progress – and margin – in opening minds than sending line-item proposals.

– A manufacturer isn’t an expert in cyber security.

– A retailer isn’t an expert in logistics optimisation.

– A software company isn’t an expert in funding models.

That’s why specialists exist. The vendor’s role is not simply to sell. It’s to illuminate what the customer cannot yet see. If you are in any doubt about this, guess why CEOs are staying up late to talk to AI?!

Customers may overestimate…

• The effectiveness of their current approach.
• The maturity of their existing systems.
• The value of well-known brands or market leaders.
• How well their teams execute in practice.
• The amount of differentiation between suppliers.
• Their understanding of the problem.

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Customers may underestimate…

• The cost of maintaining the status quo.
• The downstream consequences of poor decisions.
• The value of expertise and specialist guidance.
• The importance of consistency and standards.
• The cumulative impact of small inefficiencies.
• The opportunity cost of slow improvement.

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Customers may not realise…

• They’re solving the wrong problem.
• They’re optimising around old assumptions.
• Their current operating model is limiting growth.
• Better standards already exist.
• Existing investments could deliver far more value.
• Their organisation is creating unnecessary complexity.

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Customers may assume…

• More technology is the answer.
• More people are the answer.
• Lower price equals better value.
• Bigger suppliers reduce risk.
• Industry standard equals best practice.

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Customers may not have…

• A joined-up picture of the problem.
• A common language across the organisation.
• Clear ownership of outcomes.
• A capability-based way of thinking.
• A framework for continuous improvement.
• A practical roadmap from today’s position to a better future.

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Customers may be aiming too low…

This one is particularly interesting because it’s rarely discussed in sales.

Customers often don’t realise that they’re trying to improve within the limits of today’s model rather than asking whether the model itself could change.

Examples might include:

• Accepting industry norms that are no longer good enough.
• Assuming today’s performance is close to the ceiling.
• Believing incremental improvement is the only option.
• Never questioning whether a fundamentally better operating model exists.

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Customers may be solving symptoms rather than causes…

This is another universal pattern.

They’re buying:

• another tool
• another report
• another consultant
• another training course

…without addressing the capability or operating model underneath.

Blind spots raise the standard.

One interesting pattern we’ve noticed is that industries often normalise lower standards without realising it.

People compete on price. Everyone copies everyone else. The same conversations happen repeatedly. The same assumptions are reinforced. The blind spot becomes industry standard. Then someone introduces a better way of thinking. Suddenly buyers realise there was a higher standard available all along.

That’s what genuine expertise does.

This should start with the CEO.

Customer Blind Spots shouldn’t be invented by marketing. Or sales. Or AI.

They should come from the people who understand the industry most deeply. Blind spot know-how is company DNA and reasoning. And when it’s mentioned to you, we find the answer come instantly.

Once you’ve identified your customers’ blind spots, they influence almost every part of your commercial system.

They improve:

• positioning
• thought leadership
• prospecting
• discovery questions
• sales conversations
• onboarding
• coaching
• AI practice
• marketing content
• playbooks
• objection handling

Instead of teaching people what to sell… you’re teaching them what customers need help seeing.

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What Customer Blind Spots are not.

They’re not a feature list.

They’re not a product brochure.

They’re not an expertise or “how much we know” dump.

A technical demo from an expert in X

They’re not an excuse to lecture prospects.

They are carefully chosen observations that help customers understand their own situation more clearly.

Sometimes one of those observations naturally leads to your solution.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Either way, you’ve already become valuable.

Expertise changes what customers can see.

Modern cars have blind-spot indicators built into their mirrors.

The system doesn’t drive the car.

It simply highlights something the driver couldn’t previously see.

Good commercial conversations work in exactly the same way.

The goal isn’t to overwhelm buyers with knowledge.

It’s to illuminate the few things that matter most.

Because once people see those things…

they rarely see the problem in quite the same way again.

I think there is one sentence that captures the entire philosophy of your platform, and I’d seriously consider making it a recurring line in your marketing:

The purpose of commercial expertise isn’t to know more than your customer. It’s to help your customer see more than they could see before.