For a long time, the music business ran on a straightforward value equation. The studios were selling you new products every day. You couldn't wait to buy them—albums and then eventually individual songs. You stored them in a library. You owned them forever. BUT, your access was always constrained by some box.
At first the box was physical. Cassette racks and CD binders could only hold so many albums. Later, the box turned into gigabytes. Early MP3 players changed the form factor, but the construct was identical. You had to decide which music you wanted to listen to, then load it into the player. If you changed your mind, you had to repeat the process with your new choices.
Then Apple gave the world a new box. “1,000 songs in your pocket.” At the time, the number represented more music than the average person probably owned or at least actively listened to at any one point in time.
Apple did not ask the world to rethink what it meant to own music. They did not try to rewrite the music construct. They kept the basic deal exactly the same while eliminating the biggest pain point—the box. Ownership stayed. Capacity expanded. The value equation was familiar, just dramatically more attractive.
Then along comes Spotify, which did something very different.
Instead of promising you could carry all your purchased songs in your pocket, they redefined the music construct entirely.
Stop owning a small number of songs; instead, lease access to all the world's songs. Available anytime and on any device.
That is not a better iPod. That is an entirely different way to define what it means to “have music” in your life.
And that difference is where many first-mover companies struggle to sell their products and services to customers still clinging to old value constructs.
Their problem isn't that they built the wrong thing. It's that their sales teams think they are selling a better iPod when they have actually been handed Spotify, and sales conversions are paying the price.
They are running a “better product” sales playbook against a “new construct” sales problem.
What You Are Really Selling: Products Versus Constructs
When you strip away the jargon, a construct is simply the mental model the buyer believes defines the value equation of the product or service they're buying.
It is their internal story about what they are getting, how it works, where the value shows up, and how long that value lasts.
In the ownership world, the construct sounded like this:
I buy songs. I store them in a library. My options are constrained by both physical and digital. I technically own my entire music library, but when I am away from home, I can only access a small portion of it.
In the streaming world, the construct flips:
I do not own songs. I have access to almost any song I want, whenever and wherever I want it.
Both models deliver music to your ears, yet they ask the brain to accept a very different value equation.
In the iPod era, Apple did not change that underlying deal. They reinforced it. They said, in effect, “It is the same ownership model you already trust. You just get a tiny, beautiful box that lets you carry an astonishing amount of your music around with you.”
That is what I mean when I say it is easy to sell a better version of a thing people already understand. You are not asking the buyer to rethink the deal. You only need to demonstrate that you offer a better value proposition.
Spotify did the opposite. Their product required users to buy into a new construct. In their value equation, ownership is replaced by access. The buyer has to consider and agree to a fundamentally different trade.
And that's harder to achieve than it sounds.
The Hidden Costs of Selling New Constructs
It is tempting to blame the slow adoption of new products on lazy buyers or weak sales talent, but there is more at play.
At a human level, most of us prefer a flawed system we understand to an unfamiliar new one. The current construct may be clunky. It may even be expensive. At least we know where the sharp edges are.
Additionally, people develop a strong sense of psychological ownership once they have paid for something. When you buy an album or a piece of hardware, the feeling is clear. I gave you money. Now this is mine. I may not use it often, but I can use it forever, or at least as long as it continues to work (scratched CD anyone? 😬). And from an accounting standpoint (for business purchases) it's easy and well understood. I pay a dollar for this today, I expense a dollar today, or I depreciate it at an accepted rate. The deal is simple. And simple beats perfect every time.
But a new construct forces us to sit with uncertainty for a while, and no one enjoys that. Additionally, new constructs create greater cognitive load for the buyer. A better version lets the brain recycle an existing mental model. A new construct requires building a fresh one.
The buyer must answer different questions. How does this really work? Where are the risks? What happens to us if we change our minds later? That additional thinking is work, and we rarely acknowledge just how much energy it takes.
Layering organizational realities on top of it multiplies the challenge. Measurement frameworks, incentive plans, approval paths, and budgeting practices are all wired for the existing world. When you arrive with a Spotify-style offer, you are not just selling against a competitor. You are selling against your buyer’s internal systems.
This is why selling a new construct requires a two-stage sales process.
First, you have to get the buyer to accept a new way to think about value. Then, and only then, do you focus on making the argument that your specific product or service is the best way to capture this new value proposition.
Unfortunately, most sales teams charge straight into stage two and wonder why their close rate sucks.
My Own Spotify Moment
I'll admit it... I was super skeptical when Spotify showed up.
I remember seeing it for the first time and thinking there was no way they would convince people to sign an indefinite lease for music, especially not the folks (like me) who had already spent thousands of dollars building personal libraries. CDs, iTunes purchases, digital downloads. It all added up. How could you ask these people to start over inside a rental model?
At that moment, I was firmly inside the ownership construct. Buy once. Listen forever. Clean and simple.
What changed my mind was not the interface. It was the math.
At the time, an iPod could hold roughly 10,000 songs. If each track cost about a dollar, you were looking at a ten-thousand-dollar spend to fill the device. You would technically own the right to listen to every one of those tracks for life, but that's not how people actually listen to music. Tastes change. New artists emerge. Some of those songs become dead weight almost as soon as the novelty wears off. Lord knows my own iTunes was full of stuff I had "loved" but now rarely listened to.
Then one day, a buddy tells me to "do the math." At the time, Spotify was about $10 a month. Meaning that the same $10,000 to fill my iPod would buy roughly eighty-three years of Spotify access. Not just to the songs I had already decided I liked, but to new music I hadn't even heard of yet, and every 80's hair band rock ballad I fell back in love with in my 40's and 50's. With Spotify, I was paying for the ability to follow my musical taste wherever it wandered, without having to guess years in advance or be stuck with my bad choices forever (T'Pau anyone?).
At that point, the ownership construct no longer felt rational. I realized I was not paying to possess a finite catalog. I was paying to ride a river of music for my entire life.
That was the moment I signed up for my new Spotify subscription.
Your buyers need a similar moment. It may not involve that exact math, but it will require an equally clear shift in how they calculate value.
How To Sell the New Construct Before You Sell the Product
If you are trying to do something in your market that looks more like Spotify than iPod, hopefully I've made it clear, you can't treat the sales conversation as a single step.
You have to win the construct first. That starts by naming the old deal clearly, in the buyer’s own terms. You say out loud what they already believe. For example, when I'm talking to an agency about my agency business development consulting services. We talk through their current approach to accessing business development expertise. Today, they hire permanent staff, pay a full year's salary for their time, and hope that business development needs align with the investment. On an hourly basis, it looks like a good deal... the math works.
Then I surface the hidden costs of that arrangement. Idle time. Fixed "high" costs, especially if the person is a 30-year veteran of the agency world like me. And an external environment they can't control. Just because they want to pitch new clients doesn't mean those clients are open to being pitched; in which case, it's all for naught. That's the risk of locking in high fixed costs in a volatile business development environment.
Only then do I introduce the new construct in one simple sentence. Instead of employing a business development director with unlimited access at a reasonable hourly rate, lease access to an experienced agency business development expert only when you need it, at a higher hourly rate.
Next, I let them rerun the math under that new structure. They see what the numbers look like over two or three years if they keep buying employees versus renting access. You help them see not just the direct savings but also the additional options, such as renting access to multiple BD experts with different strengths.
Finally, I normalize the discomfort. I tell them it is entirely rational to feel uneasy, because they are not just buying a service. They are adopting a new approach to securing business development expertise for their agency.
Only after that work is done do I have the right to discuss features, implementation details, and pricing.
That sequence looks easy on paper. In practice, it is the difference between a sales call that stalls around “this is interesting, but we are not ready” and a conversation that turns into a signed agreement.
Why This Matters If You Are Selling New Products
If you are selling a product that feels ahead of your market, you are likely not just selling a better product. You are quietly asking buyers to accept a new construct, even if you have never called it that.
That buyer resistance you're feeling is not proof that your product is wrong. In many cases, it is proof that you are pressing on deeper beliefs you have not fully surfaced or addressed.
If conversion rates are stubborn despite a compelling story, you may not have a product problem. You probably have a messaging and construct problem. You've built Spotify, but you're still teaching your team to sell it like a nicer iPod. The issue isn't your vision. It's the playbook your sales teams are using to bring that vision to market.
When you're ready to create and teach that new playbook, call me, and we'll build it together.
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This post was originally published on Painless Prospecting, the weekly sales and marketing blog created by the fine folks at Converse Digital. If you want to learn how to create, engage in, and convert conversations into new clients and customers, give them a call.
