Gap Selling
Sell the distance between a buyer's current state and their future state, not the features that get them there.
How it sounds
- You Map the current state in detail before mentioning the product at all
- Buyer Describes what's actually happening today, including the cost of it
- You What would it look like if this were fixed six months from now?
- Result The size of the gap between the two states becomes the reason to buy
The full entry
Gap Selling is Keenan’s term for selling the distance between a buyer’s current state and their desired future state, rather than selling the product itself. He laid it out in his 2018 book Gap Selling: Getting the Customer to Yes, arguing that most sales training focuses on pitching and closing while skipping the harder work of understanding the problem in enough depth to prove it’s worth solving.
To use it, spend most of the call mapping the current state in real detail before you mention your product: what’s actually happening today, why, and what it costs. Then ask something like “what would it look like if this were fixed six months from now?” to define the future state. The gap between those two, made concrete, is the case for change.
It works best when a buyer is vague about their problem or is already comparing feature lists, because it forces the conversation back to root cause. The common mistake is skipping straight to the future state without fully establishing the current one; without a detailed baseline, the gap has nothing to be measured against and the pitch reverts to features.