The Buyer’s Balancing Act: Closing the Value Communication Gap (Part 2)

Helping buyers juggle limited time, conflicting information, and multiple stakeholders by showing clear, actionable value.

In Part 1, we explored the Value Communication Gap (VCG), the disconnect between the tangible business outcomes your SaaS solution delivers and the value buyers actually hear during the sales process.

Part 2 examines why this gap widens so frequently in today's environment. Buyers face more demands than ever, sorting through conflicting information while balancing the expectations of diverse stakeholders. If we don’t clearly tailor our message to each stakeholder’s needs, deals stall or quietly fade away.

Buyers Are Stretched: Your Message Must Help, Not Hinder

Gartner estimates that enterprise buyers spend only about 17% of their total buying time with vendors¹. The rest is split among internal meetings, research, and day-to-day responsibilities.

I saw this firsthand at a global building-materials manufacturer. A senior environmental manager, already overseeing multiple sites, was given a second job: select and justify a solution to digitize and execute hundreds of environmental procedures. He narrowed the field from ten vendors to three, but the real burden was building the business case and guiding it through leadership, finance, operations, and IT. Our team lightened the load by building stakeholder-specific decks, supplying concise value one-pagers, and joining his internal briefings. By taking work off his plate, we built the relationship, won his trust, and closed the deal.

Takeaway: Buyers welcome vendors who simplify complexity for them and provide ready-to-use value narratives.

Information Overload: Buyers Need Sense-Makers

Today’s buyers don’t suffer from a shortage of content; they're overwhelmed by it. Gartner notes that B2B buying groups often sift through vast amounts of digital content before engaging a vendor¹. Harvard Business Review calls this problem information overload, showing that customers who feel overwhelmed by content are 54% less likely to make confident, low-regret purchase decisions². McKinsey likewise reports that modern B2B buyers now expect a seamless, consumer-grade experience³.

Generative AI tools surface mountains of data in seconds, but their outputs are predictions, not verified facts. One prospect told us that running the same prompt twice produced conflicting competitor shortlists, useful for brainstorming but confusing when accuracy matters.

When AI answers diverge, buyers look for a steady hand. Sellers who validate, clarify, and contextualize information become indispensable. Providing a short comparison matrix, a current roadmap, or a quick call to explain industry nuances often beats a ten-page spec sheet generated by a chatbot.

Your role must evolve from simply providing information to becoming a sense-maker, someone who guides buyers clearly and confidently toward understanding precisely how your solution improves their business outcomes. If you merely repeat readily available information, you leave buyers stranded in confusion, the opposite of effective value communication.

Beyond Generic ROI Calculators: Why Tailored Value Conversations Work Better in Complex Sales

In straightforward, repeatable sales situations, ROI calculators can be effective. In complex enterprise deals, though, these generic tools often miss the mark. Buyers can feel interrogated rather than understood, forced to fit their business into a template instead of collaboratively defining real needs.

For example, when working with a plant manager devoted to continuous improvement, we took a conversational approach rather than presenting a predefined calculator. Knowing his belief in standard operating procedures, our discussion naturally led to this common-sense math:

• Would you agree that updated SOPs executed consistently would improve throughput? Yes.

• Is a 0.5% improvement achievable? Easily.

• What would that mean in annual revenue? After doing some quick calculations on a sticky note, he said, “About $80 million per year.”

The power was not the math but the shared logic behind it. By aligning with his priorities, we quickly built trust and secured the pilot.

Tailoring Your Value Communication to Each Stakeholder

• Champions need simplified buying journeys and internal alignment.

• Finance looks for hard numbers: revenue lift, cost reduction, and risk mitigation.

• Operations values practical day-to-day improvements and work-life balance.

• Executives focus on strategic outcomes such as competitive advantage and long-term impact.

Generic calculators typically satisfy only one group, usually finance. Successful sellers co-create flexible frameworks with customers, mapping benefits to each stakeholder’s priorities.

Actionable Steps to Bridge Your Value Communication Gap

Closing the Value Communication Gap today demands that sellers become genuine partners in the buying journey. Here’s how:

1. Recognize and reduce buyer overload: Proactively support your champion’s internal efforts. Provide clear, tailored resources that simplify their internal alignment.

2. Act as human sense-makers: Help buyers clarify confusion from conflicting generative AI outputs or overloaded research. Provide consistent, credible, contextual insights.

3. Adopt tailored, common-sense value conversations in complex deals: Rather than defaulting to generic calculators, develop flexible, practical frameworks collaboratively with your customers. Clearly demonstrate tangible revenue, cost, or risk outcomes relevant specifically to them.

4. Address each stakeholder’s unique perspective explicitly: Ensure your messaging clearly resonates with the distinct needs and priorities of each stakeholder: champion, finance, operations, and executive sponsor.

Your Turn - Join The Conversation!

• Have you experienced situations where buyers felt overwhelmed or confused by information overload?

• Have generic calculators worked or backfired in your complex enterprise sales situations?

If you found this useful, please repost and share it with your network!

Sources:

1. Gartner – Future of B2B Sales (enterprise buyer time allocation)

2. Harvard Business Review – Sensemaking for Sales (Information overload reduces buyer decision confidence)

3. McKinsey & Company – The future of B2B sales is hybrid (Modern buyers demand seamless, consumer-grade experiences)

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