How to Answer "What's the ROI?" Without Stumbling

You're three months into a deal. The champion loves the product. The demos went well. Then the VP of Finance joins the final call and asks one question: "What's the return on investment here?" And you freeze. You talk about features. You mention customer satisfaction scores. You say something like "most of our customers see great results." The room gets quiet. Two weeks later, the prospect goes with the incumbent — not because your product was worse, but because you couldn't justify the investment in language the buyer understood. If this has ever happened to you, you're not alone. It happens to even experienced reps. And it's almost never a knowledge problem. It's a timing problem. The ROI question is never really a question When a CFO or VP of Finance asks "what's the ROI?", they're not genuinely asking you to do math on the spot. They're testing whether you understand their business well enough to have earned the investment. The rep who stumbles fails that test — not because they don't know the answer, but because they never built the answer before walking into the room. The economic buyer doesn't want to see you calculate ROI. They want to see that you already calculated it — weeks ago, based on a deep understanding of their specific situation. Why most reps get this wrong Most reps treat discovery as information gathering. They ask questions to understand the product fit. What they should be doing is building the business case in real time — turning every discovery conversation into raw material for the financial justification they'll need later. The difference between a rep who stumbles on the ROI question and one who answers it confidently isn't intelligence. It's discipline. The top performer builds the case during discovery, not during the boardroom meeting. The four numbers you need before any buying committee conversation Before you ever get in a room with an economic buyer, you should be able to answer these four questions about your prospect's specific situation:

1. What is this problem costing them today?

Not in general — for this company, with this team, at this scale. Get a number. Ask directly: "What do you estimate this is costing you per month in time, headcount, or lost revenue?" Let them give you the number. Their number is ten times more powerful than yours. 2. What does solving it save or generate?

Flip the cost into a benefit. If the problem costs $50,000 a month, solving it is worth $600,000 a year. Say that number out loud in your next discovery call and watch what happens to the conversation. 3. What is the payback period?

Divide your annual contract value by the monthly value of solving the problem. If your solution costs $120,000 a year and the problem costs $50,000 a month, the payback period is less than three months. That's a CFO's language. That's how they think about investments. 4. What is the cost of doing nothing?

This is the number most reps never calculate — and it's the most powerful one. Every month the prospect delays costs them the value of the problem unsolved. A \(50,000/month problem that goes unaddressed for six months is a \)300,000 decision. Make that visible. How to answer the question confidently When the ROI question comes up — and it will — here's how a top performer answers it: "Based on what [name] shared with me about your current situation, this problem is costing you approximately [X] per month. At our contract price, your payback period is [Y] months, and the first-year net value is [Z]. I've put together a one-page summary of that math — would it be helpful to walk through it?" Notice what's happening there. You're not calculating on the fly. You're presenting work you already did. You're citing numbers that came from their team, not from your marketing materials. And you're offering to walk through a document — which means your champion now has something to use in internal meetings after you leave. That's the difference between stumbling and closing. The mindset shift that changes everything Stop thinking of discovery as a conversation about fit. Start thinking of it as a financial investigation. Every question you ask should be building toward a number — a cost, a frequency, a headcount, a revenue impact. When you show up to the buying committee meeting with a fully built business case — one that uses their numbers, speaks to their specific metrics, and shows a clear payback period — the ROI question doesn't kill the deal. It closes it.

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