Blue Sales Playbook: Gap Selling Methodology
It is essentially a two step process:
- Understand the problems they are having deeply, plus the change they want
- Showcase how BLue can address those problems and bring them to the future state.
1. Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Organization Profile
- Minimum Revenue/Budget: $12,000/year capacity for Blue
- Company Size: 10-500 employees (sweet spot: 25-150)
- Industry Focus: Professional services, agencies, consulting firms
- Key Indicators:
- Growing team struggling with collaboration
- Using multiple disconnected tools
- Manual processes causing bottlenecks
- Missing deadlines or losing track of projects
Buyer Persona
Our ideal buyer has both authority and buying power. They are:
- Small Companies (10-50 employees): Founder/CEO
- Medium Companies (50-200 employees): Head of Operations, Project Manager, COO
- Other Key Roles: Head of Marketing, VP of Product, Operations Director
The Painkiller Test
We only pursue prospects experiencing painkiller-level problems:
"We divide business plans into three categories: candy, vitamins, and painkillers. We throw away the candy. We look at vitamins. We really like painkillers. We especially like addictive painkillers!" — Kevin Fong
- 🔥 Painkillers: Urgent, critical problems causing immediate business pain
- 💊 Vitamins: Nice-to-have improvements with long-term benefits
- 🍬 Candy: Delightful features that don't drive buying decisions
Creating Internal Champions
Our goal is to transform buyers into internal champions who:
- Understand and articulate Blue's value
- Advocate for us within their organization
- Want to look good by finding a cost-effective solution
- Recognize both platform capabilities AND process improvement opportunities
Value Propositions
So, we need to have a unique value proposition to be able to answer the second of the three key questions that customers ask themselves when navigating a buying decision:
Why should I buy anything?
Why should I buy from you?
Why should I buy now?
Competitors such as Airtable, Asana, ClickUp, Monday, and Notion have cumulatively raised $3B+. Blue is self-funded, so we will never have even a fraction of these organisations' engineering resources or marketing reach. However, we can use the very fact that we are not venture-funded and turn that to our advantage.
Sales = Change
The gap is the space between the current state and the future state. This is where the value lives.
Current state = where customers are, pain points.
Future state = Where customer want to go. The happy place. This is where the opportunities are.
Sell the outcome, not the product.
Customers do not care about our platform. They care about how Blue can solve their problems.
That's it.
Expertize and Credebility
Everys tepy ou make in the sales process is about building credibility and establishing yourself as a trustworthy expert.
Listen, don't talk
Lots of little
Sales Rules
From "The Gap"
- No problem, no sale
- In every sale there's a gap
- All sales are about change
- Customers don't like change
- Sales are emotional
- Customer do like change when they feel it's worth the cost
- Asking "Why?" gets customers to "Yes"
- Sales happen when the future state is a better state
- No one gives a shit about you.
Demos
- No discovery, no demo
Discovery should answer:
- Does the prospect have a problem we can fix?
- Does the prospect agree they have that problem?
- Do they want to fix it now (compelling event, timeline)?
- Will they partner with us to fix it (champion, stakeholders)?
Demo: max six features, focused only on the pains that matter.
After each feature, ask a check‑in question:
“Can you see how this would improve