You will be able to map a buyer's current state, future state and the gap between them as Keenan's Gap Selling describes.
Most people have bought something they did not really need. A better phone when the old one worked fine, say, or a gym membership used four times. Usually the product was fine. There just was not much distance between where they were and where they wanted to be, so once the excitement faded, nothing pulled them back to it.
Buyers in your meetings work the same way. Keenan's book Gap Selling builds its whole method on that distance. This lesson covers the three parts of his model as he describes them: the current state, the future state, and the gap between them, using Hafiz's meeting with Rachel from lesson 3.1, SPIN selling: situation, problem, implication, need-payoff.
In Gap Selling, the current state is a full picture of where the buyer is now. It covers their situation, the problems they have, and the impact those problems have on the business or on them personally. Keenan's point is that a list of facts tells you nothing about why anyone would change.
For Rachel's logistics firm, the current state might read like this. Around ninety staff, two thirds of them drivers and warehouse workers on shifts. Payroll run monthly by one clerk using spreadsheets. Overtime worked out by hand from paper timesheets. Problems: overtime is wrong on several payslips most months, and corrections take the clerk most of two days. Impact: drivers no longer trust their payslips, Rachel spends Monday mornings handling complaints, and one experienced driver who left last quarter mentioned pay errors.
Notice how much of that came from the implication questions in lesson 3.1. Situation questions give you the first line or two. The problems and the impact are what make the current state worth writing down.
The future state is where the buyer wants to be, described in their terms rather than yours or your product's. If the buyer says "I just want the drivers to stop arguing about pay," that sentence belongs in the future state, word for word.
Keenan pushes for a future state that can be measured where possible, because a measurable goal is easier to agree on and easier to check later. So once Rachel has said what she wants in her own words, Hafiz asks what that would look like in numbers. She settles on this: payroll closed within one working day of month end, no more than one or two corrected payslips a month, and her Mondays free of pay complaints.
You get the future state with questions like "If this was working the way you wanted, what would be different?" and "How would you know it had worked?" These are close cousins of SPIN's need-payoff questions, which is part of why the two methods sit well together. Lesson 3.3 compares them directly.
The gap is the distance between the current state and the future state. In Keenan's model, the gap is what the buyer is really paying to close. The software is how Rachel gets there, but what she is paying for is the move from two days of corrections and angry drivers to one day of payroll and quiet Mondays.
This changes what you talk about. Instead of explaining features, you talk about how each part of the gap gets closed, and you can show the buyer that you understood the gap before you show them anything at all. It also changes how you think about price. The buyer weighs your price against the size of the gap. Module 4 covers how to help the buyer put a number on it.
Seeing the gap clearly also helps you spot where you cannot help. If part of Rachel's future state is "drivers accept overtime rules without arguing," and the arguments are really about the rules rather than the arithmetic, software will not close that part. Saying so early is part of the honest fit check from Sales foundations lesson 5.1, The shape of a good first meeting.
Here is the uncomfortable consequence. If the gap is small, there is little reason to buy, however good your product is.
Imagine a second firm where payroll takes one afternoon, errors are rare, and nobody complains. The operations manager agreed to meet because the old system's licence is up for renewal. Hafiz could give his best demo and the answer would still probably be "we'll stay as we are." The current state is fine, the future state is barely different, and switching has a cost of its own.
Pushing harder on a small gap rarely works, so treat it as information. It may mean you have not found the real problem yet and need more problem and implication questions. Or the buyer may really be fine, in which case the most useful thing you can do is say so. Lesson 7.2, Disqualify early and say so kindly, covers that conversation.
Gap thinking is easiest on paper. Draw three boxes side by side. The left one holds the current state, with situation, problems and impact. The right one holds the future state, in the buyer's words and with any numbers they gave you. Between them goes the gap, meaning what has to change to get from one to the other and how large that change is for this buyer.
When Hafiz draws Rachel's three boxes, the middle box has three lines in it. They are the outline of his proposal.
Choose a real buyer you have met recently, or the typical buyer you meet most, and have your notes on them nearby as you start the activity below.
For one real or typical buyer, write the current state, the future state and the size of the gap in a three-box diagram.
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