Let’s be real: getting buyers to take action isn’t easy.
You’ve been there; a deal is progressing, conversations are moving along, and then—boom—it stalls. The buyer goes quiet. They hesitate. And suddenly, what seemed like a sure thing turns into an endless cycle of follow-ups and ghosting.
Why does this happen?
It’s a common challenge in sales: while buyers might recognize the need for change, they don’t feel the urgency to act now.
According to RAIN Group research, 44% of sales leaders report the percentage of opportunities proposed and lost to “no decision” has increased, and 43% report that sales cycles have lengthened. Buyers delay because they don’t perceive enough immediate value in making a change today versus staying the same.
Leveraging the Buyer Change Blueprint to Improve Sales Velocity
- The Role of Sales Velocity
- Increase Sales Velocity with the Buyer Change Blueprint
- The Urgency Problem: Why Deals Stall
- Your Secret Weapon for Sales Acceleration
- Case Study: How Buyers Take Ownership of the Blueprint
- How to Present the BCB for Maximum Impact
- The Results: A Proven Approach for Winning More Deals
The Role of Sales Velocity
This is where sales velocity—the speed at which an opportunity moves through the sales pipeline—becomes critical.
You calculate sales, or deal, velocity by taking the number of opportunities times average deal size times win rate, divided by sales cycle length.
Deal/Sales Velocity = (# of Opportunities x Average Deal Size x Win Rate) / Sales Cycle Length
The longer a deal lingers without momentum, the more likely it is to stall or fall apart. High sales velocity means buyers stay engaged, decisions happen faster, and sales teams waste less time chasing stalled opportunities.
In our webinar, How to Drive Buyer Urgency: Introducing the Buyer Change Blueprint (BCB), I tackled this head-on and shared a tool that helps sellers keep deals moving instead of stalling in limbo.
Increase Sales Velocity with the Buyer Change Blueprint
The Buyer Change Blueprint (BCB) is a game-changer for increasing sales velocity. Instead of waiting for buyers to “get ready” on their own timeline, the BCB proactively maps out their current state, their desired future state, and the clear pathway to get there—with your solution at the center.
Watch the webinar and download a blank BCB.
This framework creates urgency by helping buyers visualize the cost of inaction and the benefits of moving forward now.
By using the BCB, sellers can:
- Encourage Collaboration: Instead of pitching a static solution, sellers use the BCB as a co-creation tool, refining it with the buyer’s input.
- Speed Up Decision-Making: Quickly align with buyer priorities and prevent lengthy internal debates.
- Drive Psychological Ownership: When buyers contribute to shaping the BCB, they feel invested in the outcome, making them more likely to move forward.
The Urgency Problem: Why Deals Stall
Understanding why deals stall is the first step to overcoming this challenge. Many sales professionals find themselves in situations where buyers seem interested but hesitate to take action.
Not only is the length of sales cycles increasing, but more buyers are choosing to make no decision at all. The reason? While they may recognize why they should act, they don’t feel the pressure to act now.
The key is to go beyond identifying buyer needs; sellers must also help buyers visualize the risks of inaction and the rewards of making a change now. This is an area where Top-Performing Sellers excel: they're 60% more likely to excel at presenting value persuasively. All sellers need this ability to create urgency.
Your Secret Weapon for Sales Acceleration
The Buyer Change Blueprint (BCB) is your secret weapon for keeping deals on track and accelerating decision-making.
This simple yet powerful framework helps sellers articulate the buyer’s current state, desired future state, and the specific pathway (your solution) to achieve that transformation. It consists of three key sections:
- Current State: A concise summary of the buyer’s pain points, challenges, and inefficiencies that you’ve uncovered during needs discovery.
- New Reality: A compelling vision of the buyer’s future once those challenges are resolved.
- Your Solution: A clear, high-level outline of how your offering bridges the gap between the current state and the New Reality.
Unlike lengthy proposals that take weeks to develop, the BCB can be created shortly after a needs discovery meeting, helping you keep up the momentum and avoid buyer disengagement. It serves as a collaborative tool, allowing you to present your initial thinking and refine the solution alongside the buyer—ultimately shaping a proposal that aligns with their priorities.
For example, as you’re wrapping up a discovery call, you might say,
"Thanks for sharing those insights. I’ve got some specific ideas about how we can help. Let me put an outline together. I’ll send it over shortly, and we can refine it together to make sure it fully aligns with your priorities before we move to proposal. Does that sound good to you?"
Most buyers appreciate this approach because it keeps the process moving without a big commitment upfront.
Case Study: How Buyers Take Ownership of the Blueprint
To see how the BCB works in action, consider this real-world example.
One of the most powerful aspects of the BCB is how it shifts the sales process from a seller-driven pitch to a buyer-driven collaboration.
In the webinar, I shared a case where a sales team used the BCB to turn a hesitant buyer into an active participant. Instead of jumping to a full proposal, they presented a Buyer Change Blueprint outlining the current state, New Reality, and high-level solution.
As they worked through the BCB together, the buyer refined the details, adjusted priorities, and added their own perspective. By the end of the conversation, the buyer was so invested that they had essentially written the proposal themselves.
How to Present the BCB for Maximum Impact
You’ve built the BCB, now how do you make sure it hits home?
To make sure it resonates with buyers, sellers should present the BCB in a way that builds engagement and teamwork:
- Start with Understanding: Begin by reviewing the buyer’s current state to demonstrate deep knowledge of their challenges.
- Example: “From our conversations, it seems that your current system is outdated and struggles to scale with your business growth. Does that align with what you’re experiencing?”
- Paint a Vivid Picture: Describe the New Reality in terms of business outcomes, not just features.
- Example: “Your business runs on a scalable, secure cloud platform that grows with you.”
- Contrast Before and After: Emphasize urgency by painting a side-by-side picture of the current state vs. the New Reality. By framing the discussion this way, you reinforce the benefits of acting now.
- Example: "Currently, your teams are limited in their collaboration by a lack of real-time data. With our solution, you could see a 25% increase in collaborative efficiency—no more back-and-forth about numbers."
- Invite Collaboration: As you share components of your solution, encourage the buyer to refine the blueprint together with you.
- Example: “This is our initial thought on how we can help bridge the gap. What do you think? Are there areas where you’d like to adjust or expand?”
The Results: A Proven Approach to Winning More Deals
In our experience, sales teams that successfully implement this tool experience:
- Reduced proposal development time
- Increased buyer participation and urgency
- Improved close rates
If you want to drive urgency and move beyond stalled deals, mastering the Buyer Change Blueprint is a must. It will not only differentiate you from the competition, but also position you as a trusted advisor who helps buyers make confident, timely decisions.
