Your champion likes it. Can they get it approved?
Your champion likes it.
They liked the demo. They agreed the problem was worth looking at. They said they would take it to the team.
So why are you still sending follow-ups that ask whether anything has happened?
There is a difference between someone agreeing with you on a call and having a case they can take to the people who need to approve a purchase.
That difference is what we're going to work on.
If you sell SaaS, you probably don't need someone to tell you discovery matters.
You know the framework. You have questions saved somewhere. You might already use AI to research accounts, summarize calls and write a decent follow-up.
But you can do all of that and still be unclear about the thing that decides your next move.
What has the buyer actually confirmed?
In the next few minutes, I'll show you why making an ROI number smaller can make a business case more useful. Why “sounds about right” can leave a critical question unanswered. And how a short conversation can give you something better to send than another request for an update.
This is for sellers working real opportunities. People who want viable deals to move for a reason they can explain, and want to recognize when a deal does not deserve more time.
Start by keeping one opportunity in mind. The pleasant one where the next step is still vague.
I'm Dingo, the writer behind Dominating SaaS.
I've been writing about sales fundamentals and how to apply them: understanding the problem, finding who can act on it, and helping someone sell internally when you are not in the room.
That is also where I start with AI.
Because it is easy to improve the appearance of sales work. Better notes. Cleaner slides. A follow-up that sounds more confident than the conversation actually was.
The harder job is improving the thinking underneath it.
You can fill the metrics field without a defensible metric. You can name a senior person without knowing their authority. You can have a friendly contact who has never secured agreement from anybody else.
Those are useful things to notice before you spend another week trying to write the perfect email.
The question is how to notice them consistently, and then do something useful with what you find.
Start with a simple example.
Meridian is a fictional company in the teaching materials. Its customer success team rebuilds account reports by hand. Eight people, about five hours a week each.
A seller hears that and sees an efficiency problem. Fair enough.
Multiply those hours by a loaded hourly cost, across the working year, and a very attractive number appears: a hundred and ten thousand, four hundred dollars.
Put “annual savings” above it, add the price of the software below it, and the slide looks almost finished.
Except nobody has established that the business will spend a hundred and ten thousand dollars less.
The people still work there. Their salaries still get paid.
Maybe the released time matters a great deal. Maybe it lets them do more valuable work. But that is a different claim, and it needs a different conversation.
I call this the Layer 1 Trap.
Layer 1 is what happens day to day. A slow process. A manual report. A handoff that keeps breaking.
Layer 2 is what that changes for the business. A cost, a revenue effect, a capacity constraint or another consequence you can investigate.
Layer 3 is why it matters enough to act. What happens if nothing changes? Who owns that outcome? What makes it a priority now?
You can get trapped by stopping at the first layer.
You can also get trapped by writing the other two layers yourself.
That second version is harder to spot because it looks sophisticated. There are numbers. There is an executive summary. The AI has even given you a compelling reason to act this quarter.
But if the buyer never confirmed the connection, it is still your interpretation.
Think of the case as a chain. One link connects the operational problem to a business effect. Another connects that effect to a priority and a decision.
Better wording around a missing link does not replace the link.
A question list can help you ask. A framework can help you organize. AI can help you prepare. None of them makes an unconfirmed assumption true.
And a buyer saying “that makes sense” does not automatically confirm the savings, the budget owner and the deadline in the next paragraph.
Sometimes a deal has another problem entirely: poor fit, bad timing, a stronger alternative. You need a method that can reveal that too.
The method is Three-Layer Playback.
You start with the buyer's words. Connect the facts they have established. Ask about the implication you still need to understand. Then give them room to correct you.
Anchor. Connect. Deepen. Check.
Back to Meridian. The buyer mentions that an outside operations team gets pulled in when reports run late.
Now there is a useful next question:
“You said the outside team gets pulled in when reporting runs late. Which part of that spend could actually change if the reporting work improved?”
That question follows the conversation. It does not demand that the buyer invent a budget to make your slide work.
In the fictional case, Finance identifies existing contractor spending. The seller models a possible reduction, allows for incomplete adoption and a delay, and includes the software and implementation costs.
The base case ends up at six thousand, four hundred dollars of positive first-year cash. The downside case is negative.
That is a smaller story. It is also a more useful one. The next request is to validate the assumptions with Finance, not to pretend the purchase is already justified.
The same discipline applies outside financial calculations.
If your contact says the CFO supports the project, ask what the CFO has actually reviewed. If there is a deadline, find out what creates it. If somebody likes the solution, find out what they are willing and able to do next.
Keep three categories visible: confirmed, hypothesis, unknown.
That last category is useful. If you do not know who approves the purchase, you have a question to investigate. If you quietly turn the most senior person on the call into the decision-maker, you have hidden the question from yourself.
The same applies to the numbers. An estimate stays an estimate. A proposed reduction stays a proposed reduction. The case gets stronger when you can explain what each statement supports and what it does not establish yet.
Then prepare a short Playback, practice saying it naturally, and check it in the appropriate conversation. Update the case when the buyer corrects you.
That is how you move from an attractive account story to a document somebody can use in an internal discussion.
Sometimes it supports a next meeting. Sometimes it supports a smaller test. Sometimes the right answer is to pause.
The point is to improve the basis for the decision, instead of decorating the uncertainty.
Understanding that distinction is a start. Using it repeatedly takes more than a paragraph of advice.
You need to see a complete case. Try the conversation yourself. Compare your attempt with a clear standard. Then apply the process to your own opportunity.
That is what I have put into Dominating SaaS with AI.
It combines the written method, working tools and reusable AI instructions with a sequence you can follow on one deal.
Starter takes you through that first opportunity. You get the seven-module playbook, a workbook, Playback practice, the full Meridian case, a buyer-case portfolio, nine workflows and the tools to draft the internal case.
Complete includes all of that, then expands the situations you can handle.
You get Discovery Architect, Industry Lens, recurring deal routines, sixteen workflows in total, and three annotated cases. One tests the numbers. One tests a friendly contact with an uncertain decision path. One ends in a sensible no-fit decision.
Complete also includes a twelve-station practice lab. Each station gives you a task, an answer standard, a common mistake and a retry. You can rehearse with AI or a colleague.
The standard matters more than whether the AI sounds impressed.
For example, if your practice answer calls a friendly contact a champion, the review asks what behavior supports that judgment. If your follow-up assumes Finance has approved, the exercise sends you back to the actual words. Then you try again with the missing assumption visible.
You can see the difference between a first attempt and a corrected one. That gives you a specific behavior to carry into the next conversation.
You are building a record of what you did, what was missing and what improved. Then taking the relevant part into real work.
Choose Complete if you want the full practice and deal-building system.
It is a one-time digital purchase. The current price and exact contents are on the product page. You get Starter inside it, so there is no need to buy both.
Picture the next conversation on your calendar. You have one buyer statement anchored to its source, a consequence you still need to check and a question that invites a real answer. The method, cases and tools give you a path for preparing that work and improving the attempt.
If that is you, choose Complete below and start with the opportunity you have been thinking about while watching.
If you would prefer to begin with the first-deal path, choose Starter.
It contains the whole entry workflow. You can prepare the conversation, practice the Playback and build the buyer material without another purchase.
If you later want the additional cases and practice, your verified Starter payment is credited toward the Complete total. The upgrade page shows the remaining amount before you pay.
Both digital options have a fourteen-day refund promise. Use the materials. If they are not right for you, email support within fourteen days. You do not have to close a deal, achieve a score or complete every exercise to ask for your money back.
Choose the option you will use, and open the first exercise.
That exercise is small. Take one statement from your notes. Mark what the buyer confirmed. Mark what you added. Write the question that would resolve the most important difference.
You can start that work in ten minutes. You do not have to finish a library or configure an autonomous agent first.
Take that question into the next suitable conversation. Keep what the buyer confirms or rejects. Then revise the case, with a clearer reason for your next move.
There is a free worked example on this page if you want to inspect the approach first. Read it. Look at the output. Then decide whether the complete working system would be useful on your next opportunity.
If it would, choose Starter or Complete below. Bring the deal you are least comfortable defending. Start there.
A few quick answers.
You can keep your employer's sales methodology. This helps you apply evidence to it.
The AI instructions use a manual copy-and-paste baseline in a workspace your employer permits. An AI subscription and live-call software are not included. If you cannot use customer information, start with the fictional cases.
Yes, personal coaching and team training are available separately. Start with the relevant application below. If there is a fit, we will invite you to a review and explain the engagement and investment. You can use the digital system independently.
And no, the goal is not to force every opportunity into a sale.
It is to give the worthwhile ones a stronger case and recognize what still needs to be true.
Choose your version below. I'll see you in the materials.
Compare Starter and Complete