Get to Your First One Million ARR

Stop Pitching. Start Diagnosing. The Sales Call Framework That Converts.

Most technical founders treat sales like an engineering problem:

• You build a great product.
• You explain why it’s great.
• People buy it.

Sounds logical. But in practice, this doesn’t work.

Here’s why: People don’t buy products. They buy solutions to problems.

And here’s the real kicker—most prospects don’t fully understand their own problems.

This is why traditional pitching fails. If you assume the customer knows exactly what they need, you’ll end up solving the wrong problem—or a problem that is not painful enough, and you’ll get brushed off with a “We’ll think about it.”

At Terality, I ran dozens of early sales calls thinking I had the perfect pitch. We were selling a faster, more scalable alternative to Pandas for data scientists. But I kept hearing:
"This looks cool, but we definitely have the pain. We will get back to you when wehave it again."

It wasn’t until I stopped pitching and started diagnosing that we started closing real users.

The Difference Between Selling and Diagnosing

Imagine a doctor who starts prescribing medication before asking any questions. You wouldn’t trust them, right?

That’s exactly what most founders do on sales calls.

Real sales is diagnosis first, prescription second.

Here’s how this plays out:

1. Prospects Talk in Symptoms, Not Problems

Customers rarely say:
"Our ML pipeline is too slow, and it’s costing us $200K in lost productivity peryear."

Instead, they’ll say:
"We’re trying to speed up our data workflows."

Your job is to translate vague symptoms into specific, high-value problems.

• Bad: "Okay, here’s how we make workflows faster." (You jumped straightinto pitching.)
• Good: "What’s slow about it? How is that impacting your team? How doesthat affect your ability to hit your goals?" (You’re digging deeper.)

2. If There’s No Cost, There’s No Urgency

The easiest way to kill a deal? Selling something that isn’t a top priority.

If a problem doesn’t have a quantifiable cost, it won’t get budget.

Here’s how to uncover cost:

• “What happens if this doesn’t get fixed in six months?” (forces them to think about consequences)
• “How much time does this problem waste per week?” (turn time intomoney)
• “What’s this delay costing your business in lost revenue?” (tie problem to financial impact)

Once a prospect feels the pain in concrete terms, urgency skyrockets.

3. The No-Pitch Discovery Call Framework

Most founders talk too much on sales calls. The best ones talk less than 30% ofthe time.

Here’s a structured approach to running discovery like a pro:

Phase 1: Set the Stage (2 min)

"I want to learn more about your challenges today. If it makes sense, I’ll walk youthrough how we can help."

✔️ Signals that this isn’t a sales pitch

✔️ Puts them in control, lowering defenses

Phase 2: Dig Into the Problem (15 min)

• “What are you using today?” (understand their current workflow)
• “What’s working? What’s not?” (identify frustration points)
• “What happens if this problem continues?” (force them to consider long-term impact)

✔️ Your goal is to find a problem worth solving, not to pitch

Phase 3: Quantify the Pain (5 min)

• “How does this impact your team?” (time, efficiency, stress, risk?)
• “What’s the business impact?” (lost revenue, higher costs?)
• “How much is this problem costing per year?” (helps them justify yourprice later)

✔️ If there’s no quantified pain, there’s no deal

Phase 4: Gauge & Create Urgency (3 min)

• “Where does fixing this rank among your priorities?” (low priority = nodeal)
• “Is this something you’re looking to solve this quarter?” (forces atimeline)
• “Who else is involved in this decision?” (ensures you’re talking to adecision-maker)

✔️ If there’s urgency, move to the next step. If not, don’t waste time chasing. Build urgency with them first.

Phase 5: Only Pitch If It Makes Sense (5 min)

If they have a painful, high-priority problem that your product solves, then you pitch.

"Based on what you shared, here’s how we help teams like yours solve [specific pain point]."

If they don’t have an urgent problem? Thank them for their time and move on.

Why This Works

• You control the conversation, but they do the talking.
• You position yourself as an expert, a consultant, not a salesperson.
• By the time you pitch, they already want the solution.

For me, shifting to this approach doubled our demo-to-close rate and increased ACV significantly—because we were anchoring pricing to business impact, not features.

If you’re trying to get to $1M ARR, you don’t need more leads. You need better sales conversations.

I cover this in depth inside The Founder Protocol—a structured system for SaaS & AI founders who want a predictable and repeatable GTM playbook.

Guillaume

P.S. Want my exact discovery call script? Reply with “Discovery” and I’ll send it over.