Making intelligent decisions with mental models

Level-up your presales toolkit

Hot on the heels of creative solutioning in presales, this post provides a few mental models you can apply during your presales efforts.

Mental models are frameworks that help us understand and navigate the world around us, making them particularly useful in presales. These models encourage a deeper understanding of what the customer is truly looking for, simplifying complex situations, and providing a structured way to evaluate new opportunities.

First Principles Thinking

First principles thinking involves breaking down complex problems into basic elements and then reassembling them from the ground up. This approach allows presales teams to question assumptions and innovate at the root level, potentially leading to unique and highly effective solutions. The 5 WHYs method is an effective way to apply first-principle thinking to your discovery activities (and one of my favourites as it comes naturally to me).

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking encourages understanding the bigger picture by seeing the whole system rather than just its components. In presales, this can mean considering how various aspects of a customer’s business are interconnected and how a solution might impact or integrate with multiple facets of their organization.

Lateral Thinking

Lateral thinking is solving problems through an indirect approach that often involves ideas that may not seem immediately obvious. This mental model is crucial for brainstorming sessions and when the immediate solutions do not adequately address the customer’s needs. You can look to other professions and industries for inspiration and solutions.

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)

In some cases, you need to get tactical and get shit done. The JTBD framework focuses on the customer’s underlying needs or the "jobs" they are trying to get done. This can serve as a great way to add traceability against the customer outcomes and prioritize immediate deliverables vs. longer-term investments.

The Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule)

The Pareto Principle suggests that 80% of the results often come from 20% of the efforts. This can mean identifying which features or capabilities will deliver the most value to the customer and focusing efforts in those area to maximize impact.

Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes!

This model focuses on identifying all the customer outcomes, prioritizing them, and developing innovations to improve the delivery of the most critical outcomes. In presales, this means building solutions that directly contribute to improving specific aspects of the customer’s business performance.

The Lean Startup Methodology

Although primarily a business model, the principles of Lean Startup—build, measure, learn—can be adapted to presales solutions. This approach advocates for developing minimal viable solutions that can be quickly tested and iterated upon, allowing for responsive and adaptive solution development. You may build several smaller experiments or POCs with customers to demonstrate the value with a targeted audience and iterate from there to scale capabilities with that client.

Do you have other mental models you have found effective? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks for reading!

-Adam