Knowledge
Łukasz Zjawiński at the Sales is the Queen conference
Łukasz Zjawiński of TechMine spoke at the Sales is the Queen vol. 4 conference in Bielsko-Biała with a talk on how to build communication so that clients want to buy, and how to use AI to help create it.
He talked about the Value Triangle, a proprietary sales communication framework that reverses the typical way of talking to a client. Instead of starting with the solution, a company should start with the client’s problem. Below is a summary of the talk, a definition of the framework and a recording of the whole presentation (in Polish).
Łukasz began with a situation probably every owner of a service company who sells their own services knows.
You are at a meeting with a client. They agreed to let you talk about your solution, so you begin. You say how great it is, what it can do, what benefits it brings. But with every passing minute you can see that initial enthusiasm slipping away. The client starts waiting for you to finish. And when you finish, you hear: “Okay, package it into a proposal for me, send it over by email, we will discuss it and let you know.”
In Łukasz’s view, this is where most companies lose control of the sales process, without even realizing that the problem started much earlier. Not with what is said, but with the order in which it is said.
Why do clients stop listening when you talk about your solution?
Clients lose interest because the conversation starts with the provider, not with them. People have a natural resistance to whatever someone is insistently praising, regardless of how good the solution itself is.
On stage came a story from an experiment on the streets of New York: a man was handing real gold bars to passers-by. A great many of them actively dodged to avoid accepting the bar.
It is similar with companies’ solutions. The owner knows that what they have is valuable. They look at the client and can see in advance that it will be perfect for them. Only the client does not know it yet. This mechanism works the same way whether it is an ERP system, cybersecurity services or a custom software implementation.
What does the client really buy in consultative selling?
This is the trap that technical companies in particular fall into. They try to educate clients, explain the architecture of the solution, the parameters, the differentiating features. They force the client to educate themselves in their reality, because they assume that if the client understands what they are getting, they will buy.
Łukasz explained that clients do not want to be experts in someone else’s solutions. They came because they count on the provider being the expert. They want to solve the problem they face, not learn programming.
In B2B sales the point is not for the client to understand the company. The point is for the client to feel understood. Because if they feel understood, they can trust, and trust in sales is the condition without which no buying decision will happen.
What is the Value Triangle?
The Value Triangle is a proprietary sales communication framework created by Łukasz Zjawiński, based on three elements arranged in a strictly defined order: Problem, Result, Solution. It is the central element of the SalesMachine B2B sales system, which Łukasz has been developing at TechMine for several years and implements with owners of technology companies.
Most companies start their communication with the solution. With what they have, what they can do, how they differ. That is exactly the reverse of the order that works.
Problem is the first vertex. The client’s situation, challenges, pains, but not at the level of a generic “you have too few clients”. It is about a specific description: the owner of a 15-person technology company who built it with their own effort, wins clients through networking and referrals, has hit a glass ceiling in revenue, all sales depend on them and they are unable either to break through further or to build a sales structure they could delegate to someone. The more deeply a company knows the specific situation of its client segment, the more strongly its communication resonates.
Result is the second vertex. Clients do not buy solutions. They buy the results the provider is able to deliver to them, and most often they associate those with removing the problems that block their company. Only gathering both of these elements in needs discovery gives the green light to present the offer.
Solution appears at the end. After the client feels that someone understands their situation and knows which results they care about.
This order changes the dynamic of the sales relationship from “I am trying to sell” to “the client wants to buy”. It is the foundation of building predictable B2B sales, which, in Łukasz’s view, too few technology companies think about.
You can watch the whole talk, in which Łukasz Zjawiński discusses the Value Triangle, on YouTube (in Polish):
How to use the Value Triangle together with AI?
At the end Łukasz showed how to translate the framework into daily work. The starting point is a table with three columns: Problem, Result, Solution. Each row describes one axis of value, framed from the perspective of a specific client segment. Not generically, not at the level of an industry, but at the level of the situation the client actually finds themselves in.
Such a table can then be fed to an AI model, instructing it to build communication based on these elements and in this order. If the AI is to write a cold email, it starts with the problem, moves on to the result and only at the end gently suggests that there is a solution that addresses it.
Companies that start with the solution talk about themselves. Companies that start with the client’s problem speak in a way that resonates with them. That difference decides whether communication opens a conversation or bounces off like a pea off a wall. The Value Triangle is one of the five pillars of SalesMachine and on its own can change the way a service company talks to the market.
