Hey Reader,
During a mentoring session last week, a B2B SaaS team walked me through their go-to-market logic. They were targeting retailers in the CPG space. The reason? Retailers could mandate that vendors use the platform. Force the supply chain from the top.
It sounded smart. It was a trap.
I stopped them and asked one question: Who bleeds the most money when this problem goes unsolved?Silence. Then they realized it wasn't the retailer at all. It was a specific subset of mid-tier suppliers who were hemorrhaging margin every quarter because of the exact inefficiency the platform solved.
This is a pattern I see constantly in early-stage B2B. Founders confuse power with pain, and they are not the same axis.
The powerful entity – the retailer, the enterprise buyer, the platform giant – has leverage, yes. But leverage doesn't create urgency. Pain does. The supplier bleeding money at the end of the quarter has every reason to fight for your product in procurement meetings, beg their finance team to approve the budget, and evangelize it to peers. The retailer with power? They'll park your request in a committee and move on.
Your true champion is the one who can't afford the status quo, not the one who controls the room.
Power players are convenient in theory. Pain holders are dangerous in practice – dangerous in the best possible way, because they become internal salespeople you never had to hire.
The Clarity Filter Insight
In B2B, build for whoever is bleeding the most money – not whoever has the most leverage.[Share on LinkedIn] [Share on X]
Pull up your supply chain or buyer map today. Draw two columns: power and pain. If they're pointing at the same entity, great. If they're not – and they usually aren't – reconsider who you're building for. The deal you close with the pain holder will close faster, renew harder, and refer louder than the one you spent six months negotiating with the gatekeeper.
Speak soon, — Dmitry
P.S. Don't write code for a product nobody wants to buy. I built Traction OS to give you the exact 60-day roadmap, sales scripts, and validation templates you need to hit your first $10k MRR without guessing. From complete scratch or with an existing MVP.