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When They Say "Your Solution Doesn't Have What We Need"
The Feature Fallacy
When prospects claim your solution lacks a critical feature, amateur salespeople panic and start promising custom development or roadmap additions. Fatal error. What you're hearing isn't a feature gap it's a communication failure. You've allowed them to focus on capabilities instead of outcomes, specifications instead of results, tools instead of transformation.
Here's the elite insight: prospects who fixate on missing features are actually revealing they don't understand how to achieve their desired outcome. They're prescribing the medication instead of diagnosing the disease. Your job isn't to match their feature checklist it's to demonstrate why their checklist might be wrong.
The rookie response is defending your feature set or promising future functionality. The professional response is questioning the assumption behind their requirement. Most "must-have" features are actually "nice-to-have" preferences based on past experience, not future success. You need to redirect from HOW they want to solve the problem to WHAT they're actually trying to achieve.
The outcome pivot: "That's an interesting requirement. Help me understand the business outcome you're trying to drive with that specific feature. There might be a more effective way to achieve the same result." This isn't about features it's about results. And results are where elite performers dominate.
Your Action Blueprint
Redirect feature fixation to outcome achievement:
Question the requirement's origin - Understand why they believe they need this specific capability
Separate needs from wants - Help them distinguish between critical outcomes and preferred methods
Introduce alternative approaches - Show different ways to achieve their desired results
Demonstrate superior outcomes - Prove your method delivers better results than their specified approach
Reframe competitive advantage - Position your unique approach as strategic differentiation, not limitation
P.S. when prospects focus on missing features, they're telling you they don't understand the best path to their goals. Guide them.
