Gap selling to a leader who just inherited the number
A new leader doesn't want features. They want the distance closed between the number they were handed and the motion they actually have. That gap is the whole sale.
When someone inherits a number, they also inherit a gap: the distance between the target on the board and the motion that currently exists to hit it. Everything about how you sell to them should orient around that gap.
Start with the gap, not the product
A new leader is not shopping for features. They are trying to figure out, quickly and under pressure, where they are exposed. The most valuable thing you can do early is help them see the gap clearly — where the pipeline is thin, where the stack is shelfware, where the motion depends on luck.
Sell the closing of that gap. The product is just the mechanism.
The biggest gaps cluster around the transition
The sharpest, most urgent gaps tend to show up precisely when leadership changes hands. A new VP has an inherited forecast they don't trust, a team that isn't built for the new target yet, and a board expecting a leading indicator before the next review.
Those are not abstract problems. They are the specific, time-boxed pressures of the first quarter — and they are exactly the gaps an outside system can close fastest.
Make the first 90 days the frame
Anchor the conversation in the leader's first ninety days. What needs to be true by the first QBR? What leading indicator buys them room? What can be live in weeks rather than quarters?
When you frame the offer as the fastest credible way to close the gap inside that window, you stop being a vendor pitching a tool and start being the help a new leader was already looking for.
