In this episode of the B2B Brand180 Podcast, Linda Fanaras interviews Chaz Horn, B2B sales expert and creator of the business case process. Together, they explore why companies may be losing revenue even when they have strong products and leads, where value gets lost throughout the buyer and customer journey, and how a structured business case can help close those gaps.
Chaz shares practical insights on replacing traditional discovery calls with value-driven conversations, aligning marketing and sales, and reinforcing value after the contract is signed. You’ll hear actionable strategies for improving close rates, shortening sales cycles, and creating more opportunities for referrals, upsells, and cross-sells.
01:55 Why Revenue Leaks Aren’t Always a Lead Generation Problem
07:32 Where Revenue Gets Lost Across the Buyer and Customer Journey
12:26 Aligning Marketing, Sales, and Customer Experience Around Value
15:24 The $200,000 to $3.9 Million Story
22:00 Not Product Service, It’s Customer Experience
23:55 Rapid-Fire Questions: Lead Generation, Sales, and Positioning
https://masteryofb2bsales.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaz-horn
Linda’s LinkedIn:Â https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindafanaras/
Millennium Agency: Brand Strategy | Marketing | Web Design: mill.agency
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@mill.agency
Linda’s Books:
Claim Your White Space
https://www.amazon.com/CLAIM-YOUR-WHITE-SPACE-CRITICAL-ebook/dp/B0CLK8VLYV
Passion + Profits: Fueling Business And Brand Success
https://www.amazon.com/Passion-Profits-Fueling-Business-Success-ebook/dp/B0CLLDDSNX/
Linda:
Welcome to the B2B Brand 180 Podcast, where we don’t just talk about growth, we challenge the assumptions behind it. I’m Linda Fanaras, the CEO of Millennium Agency and your host today. Today, I’m very excited to be joined by Chaz Horn. Chaz has actually been- he spent years studying one question: Why do good companies lose revenue even when they have great products, great people and a proven track record? What he found was surprising and most companies aren’t losing deals because of competition. They’re losing revenue because value isn’t being communicated at the right moments in the buyer’s journey. That discovery led him to what he calls the business case process. It’s a framework designed to create value before the sale, during the sale, and after the sale. And the numbers are really hard to ignore us. So we’re going to be talking about that today and ways to increase your close rate, shorten sales cycle, and dramatically provide higher customer lifetime value.
Chaz, welcome to the show today. I’m excited to bring you on. It’s great to have you.
Chaz:
Linda, great to be here. What a great introduction. Wow, you said it so well. It’s so true.
Linda:
Awesome. Yeah, you sound great too. I’d love to just get started. So I’d love to call something out right away because most companies think that they have a sales problem, they think they have a marketing problem, they think they have a lead generation problem. But what if one of those are not actually the problem? What if it’s actually revenue that’s leaking out of the business long before the proposal is sent and long after the contract is signed? That’s what we’re seeing. They spend thousands of dollars on leads. They’re running all these nurturing opportunities, and we see it on the marketing side. And growth really can be hard and the issue is really value and worked with a lot of different industries. So what was the moment you actually realized the biggest revenue problem wasn’t lead generations or sales trading? It was like the lack of structure and the business case.
Chaz:
Yeah, that’s a great question. And I probably saw hints of it throughout my career. The big thing that leaders have to know out there is that if there’s a problem in the business, Jocko Willing said this so well in his book, Extreme Ownership, if there’s a problem in the business, it’s the leader’s fault. And we can get so caught up in doing things the way we did them yesterday and continuing to do that today because we did it yesterday and tomorrow. It’s like having blinders on and we miss out in seeing things peripheral. And so it wasn’t until I was talking with a client and we were going through the process and I was starting to be more flexible about my thoughts and whatnot because I can get so caught up because my process works, it’s proven, and my clients get results. But my client said something and I was a lot more flexible.
And that’s one of the five pillars of resilience, flexibility. And they said, “Well, how about if we bring up a business case?” I’m like, “Okay, tell me more.” And I was very hesitant. “Well, we want to do this at the beginning and then over here. “And then I talked to another client about doing this and they said,” Well, how about here, here, here, put it. “And so as we started executing on the business case, I realized that it impacts them at the buyer’s journey. That’s when you’re first reaching out, lead
Business development, marketing, which you do, Linda. And then they get into the sales process and talking with a salesperson and everyone has a discovery call. I mean, every one of my clients, before we get started, what’s your sales process? What do we do? Boom, boom, they have a discovery call. How do you differentiate yourself if every one of your competitors has a discovery call? I’m not going to go down this. I was going to go into the amygdala, but with the discovery call, there’s alarms going off in your buyers, your prospective clients, your prospect’s head about a warning because they’ve had bad experiences before. Do you ever remember a time where you had a good sales experience or far in between? So I though, okay, we’re not having a discovery call. We’re going to have, like if you’re an operational company, like one of my SaaS customers, they have an operational SaaS product.
So they do an operational assessment. So that’s different, but it’s not just changing the name of something. It has to be something of value. So we’re not just putting icing on a rotten cake that looks beautiful on the outside, but when you get down into it, they’re like, this really means nothing. So we started implementing and executing and tweaking and I started realizing, oh my goodness, when you go to business development and marketing and start using the language of providing value with the business case, this is not about you coming in and us drilling you with a bunch of questions. It’s about providing clarity. Who doesn’t need clarity out there? Everybody. And what happens with clarity? You have confidence and with confidence, what do you do? You move forward doing what you should do. So throughout marketing, sales, using the business case, and then within the first meeting, I create a business case for people.
I just did one earlier this week. They became a client to provide value on what’s the problem? What’s it’s costing them? What’s the cost of an action? And how do they get around this and what’s the ROI? So by putting this together, it gives them a framework where they have clarity. It’s in writing. And then we move from a short meeting into a longer meeting to analyze the business case. And then once they onboard, when they start using it, then they onboard the client and that leads to tracking them throughout the customer journey. So buyer’s journey to onboarding to customer’s journey. So it makes everything more seamless. And I know I use language and when something is different and people have been doing things a certain way for decades or a sales process, they’re like, “Well, what’s different about this?” There’s so much there. And so I appreciate the question so we can drill down deeper and really explain this for people.
Linda:
Yeah. And I think part of what you’re doing here is you’re providing some value. You’re putting this business case together for a prospective client, providing value for their own company to give them insight that maybe they’re not able to look at because they’re in their company. They’re busy doing their day-to-day, whether it could be even strategic long-term visioning or it could be just tactical things. But having an outsider, I think, come in and do that is helpful. So I know most organizations, they just assume revenue loss happens when they lose the deal. But that’s not really where it starts. It starts before the meeting. I know we’ve talked about this. It continues during the sales process. It accelerates even after the client signs. So the scary part is that most leaders don’t see what’s happening. And it seems like that might be another factor is that it’s through the whole process, to your point, it’s not just on the front end.
Chaz:
Yeah. Let me hit this succinctly. So with business development, I was dealing with another SaaS company. I work with a lot of SaaS companies. And the business development or SDR, BDR, whatever you want to call them, who is responsible for scheduling meetings, qualified meetings, he would schedule the meeting, 40% show up rate. Meaning if this person, his name is Greg, which scheduled 10 meetings, four people showed up. So something is broken with that process. And this is an area where revenue is leaking because you’re paying this person to reach out and connect with people and schedule meetings all that time to schedule those 10 meetings and four people show up. And those four weren’t really as qualified as they should be.
So what we did for Greg is we instituted the business case. Back to what you said, Linda, and it’s a great point about value. If I would create a business case previously, I would charge them 500, $1,000 to create a business case. But with AI and with your AI agent taking notes, you can simply set something up in any AI, Claude, I use Claude projects. So it creates the business case for them once you have it set up correctly. So instead of six hours to create a business case, it’s done in five minutes just by copy and pasting. So Greg, when going through the. I haven’t unlocked the four deadbolts to schedule meetings. It’s the four deadbolts to get their attention, keep their attention, leverage their attention, schedule the meeting. And so what he did is he’s leveraging their attention. He would say, “Doug, what we do is we create a business case for you.
It’s complimentary. This is going to give you absolute clarity on where you are, where you need to go. What are those roadblocks keeping you from getting to your goal? How to overcome those? What’s the ROI if you fix this problem? And what is the COI, the cost of inaction if you do nothing?
And with this, you’re going to get clarity and with clarity, you’ll have confidence.” Oh, okay. Now they show up. They’re getting something of value, I mean legitimate value. And now they’re engaged in the process and they review it after the first meeting and the second meeting. So Greg, he went up to a 75% or a seven and a half out of 10 show up rate and they were more qualified. And now their sales cycle was reduced. And I like to use onboarding instead of closing, rather onboard someone than close them.
So their onboarding percentage went up and it worked well. And the salespeople, their closing or onboarding percentage, again, as I mentioned, went up by 21% within this company. This is after it’s handed off from either marketing, this case was Greg, to sales. The stakeholders, decision makers, if you want to use a different word, they showed up engaged. They were able to leverage this business case to get more stakeholders into the meeting. And the cool thing about the salespeople is it took the pressure off them because they just saw it as different as opposed to, “Oh my goodness, I’m going to have to ask these questions.” And even if they don’t say that on the outside, on the inside in their brain, there is a fear. The flow is much more natural. It’s about one person with a problem, one person with a solution coming together to work congruently in alignment with one another so that they can solve the problem and you help them get to the place where they overcome their obstacles and reach their goals.
It’s about transformation.
Linda:
Yep. Yep. No, that’s perfect. I mean, when we talk about the revenue leaks, we talked about four key areas. We’ve got marketing and business development. We’ve got the buyer’s journey, the sales process, the customer journey. It seems to me that all of those have to really flow pretty seamlessly or you could run into some problems. So because if your positioning isn’t attracting the right people and you’re creating friction before conversations actually start, if your buyer’s journey isn’t creating value and you’re kind of fighting to get that second meeting, and then your sales process isn’t continuously reinforcing the value, that’s based on your positioning, you’re extending those sales cycle. I know this is a little long. And your customer is more, your journey is more reactive because you’re kind of adjusting. You’re not really clear and concise on what you’re saying, what you’re offering, and how you’re bringing them through the journey, any one of those journeys.
So I would assume doing that, you’re kind of leaving opportunities on the table. So would you say that that could be the case?
Chaz:
Big time. And you know because you, we’re kind of. I do sales and I understand marketing. By the way, when you have sales and marketing working, I don’t know why. So many companies, marketing and sales, they have this type of relationship and it’s totally fine. They’re two sides of one coin. So you know within positioning, and that’s so important. We know the language, but a lot of times people don’t understand what positioning means. It’s you put yourself in a certain place so it’s just obvious with your messaging, your copy, your content, with the words you use so that as soon as they hear you, they understand and realize, wow, they get me and they see you as an authority and this is something new and different. It’s like, wow, that’s different.
Who else is actually creating something of value with just after one meeting? I’m not talking about something cheap, fluffy, because buyers are more educated than ever before and they can smell fluff a mile away, maybe 10 miles away, maybe even a hundred miles away. Yeah. So when you position with the business case, it provides value and it just makes the conversations go seamlessly. People need to know and understand how to position it and what to say and how to say it. That’s the thing I’m still tweaking and improving and whatnot. But all of the conversations I have when the business case is here at business development or marketing in the sales conversation with my clients and then the onboarding and then customer journey, which is huge because there’s a lot of revenue leaking there. It’s each and every step of the process here. This brings them together in one process that’s in alignment and then it succinctly moves from step to step to step to onboarding to customer journey.
And then typically my clients with this process, with the business case, my customers see an increase in referrals, upsells and cross-sells by 30% minimum. That’s a conservative estimate. People don’t even realize they have a gold mine right underneath their nose.
Linda:
Right, right. True. We talk about the discovery call. So old hat is like, okay, let’s do a discovery call. But at least when you’re going through this process, you’re offering something of value. I mean, I think a lot of the prospects today, like you said, they’ve already done the research. They’ve compared the vendors. By the time they’ve got to you, they’ve consumed all this content. So when they get to you, it’s not like, “Hey, let’s have a discovery call.” If it’s more like, “Let’s get down to the bolts, nails and bolts or whatever, screws and bolts. Let’s do a business case for that first meeting. There you’re bringing value.” So you talked about introducing the business case from the first conversation that we had. So how does that change the dynamic between that first meeting and the second meeting?
Chaz:
Yeah, I love that question because it’s transformative. You set it up and so they enter the meeting, and I’ll just use a recent case. Sanjeev. Sanjeev, first meeting is going to be a half an hour. That’s it. Half an hour. And we’re going to create your business case. And I’m going to be redundant here on purpose. This is so you get clarity. And with clarity, you’ll have confidence. This is going to show you your obstacles, why they’re happening, how to overcome those, the ROI if you do, and the COI if you don’t. So this is going to give you that clarity that will give you confidence on what to do. And in between the first meeting and the second. So I’m already setting it up, the process for them, so they know in their mind there’s no hidden agenda. I’m just laying it right out.
I’m going to email you this in between the first meeting and the second meeting. And then we’ll go deeper and analyze this in the second meeting. And that’s usually typically an hour. Then at the end of the second meeting, now it depends upon the size of the company, smaller or bigger. But if I have a company that’s typically somewhere between one to 20 million, typically it’s a two-call onboarding, two-call close. If it’s a larger company, then it may be a couple other meetings. But the thing is, let’s talk about some of the larger companies because many times you have a business development person. A lot of times it’s because of fear. I used to be there. I just put up a YouTube video about this when I was first getting into sales. You reach a middle level manager because you feel like they’re more along your level and the CEO is like, “Ah, that’s a waste of time.” The business case helps give you confidence to talk to the CEO. But even if you don’t get the CEO, the C level in the meeting, you set up the agenda so that the C level or the other stakeholders’ decision makers will receive a copy of this. Now you have a much higher percentage of decision makers going into the second meeting and they’re engaged.
One of my clients, Max, said, it’s like, “Chaz, I never had this happen before.” I’m like, “What happened? I emailed the business case and I sent it to the C level. They weren’t in the meeting. And I had someone respond to this. It’s like, you know what? You really need to add this.” So they’re engaged in the process. When you have them have homework to do or skin in the game, they’re engaged. A lot of times people will set the process up and they schedule the next meeting or they don’t schedule a next meeting when they end a meeting, which is a huge mistake. And then people aren’t engaged like, “Oh, I’m meeting with Chaz today. He’s trying to sell me something.” They’re not engaged. You got to get them engaged so you differentiate yourself from everyone else and they see you as providing actual value because you’re speaking to the things they actually care about themselves. And you’re like, wow. I know there has to be neuroscience. There’s something about their own words being in black and white, talking about problems they’re facing and them reading it that just changes the entire dynamic of the conversation. People show up, as I said, more engaged. And the closing percentage, I was at 100% closing percentage this month, and then I had someone that wasn’t a good fit. This was for me personally. So he blew my 100% closing percentage this month. But it’s still better than it has been because of the business case.
Linda:
Right. You told me about, well, I call it the $200,000 to $3.9 million story example that you shared. And it was done through referrals, upsells, cross-sells. So you had actually implemented that business case and the numbers. So what are some of those things that you did to help that company?
Chaz:
Yeah, that’s amazing. This is where I took something from my past and I put it together a business case. I’m like, oh my gosh, they work together. So typical process, you go through this buyer’s journey, you go to onboarding, and then it gets handed off to operations depending upon how you’re set up. So once you onboard them, that business case becomes the scope of work and it gets handed off. So all the details, all the dos, don’ts, what not to do, what not do. So there’s not scope creep into what they do when they onboard. A lot of my clients struggle with that. And that’s a revenue leak, by the way, because you’re providing more services above and beyond what you said. And then it gets handed off at the onboarding. This is such a beautiful thing, Linda. They create, let’s just say you have.
Which one of your company colors?
Linda:
Black and blue.
Chaz:
So let’s call it a blue pass. In this one company went from 200,000 to $3.9 million in 12 months. They had a blue pass. So now at the onboarding, and this, oh my goodness, this saves so much revenue. You at the onboarding are going to schedule proactively check-in calls to review the blue pass. In the blue pass, whatever your company color is, don’t get hung up with a blue pass. It doesn’t even have to be a color pass, just is a pass. It has all the information on where they were, what it was costing them, the mental anguish, the monetary costs in the business. Now you review it, let’s say every 30 days or every 60 days and say, John, okay, so this is where you were. Remember the problem there? Oh yeah, I wanted to forget about that. Well, we solved this, this, this.
And you have this again in black and white within the blue pass or whatever you want to call the pass. And so it looks like right now we’re providing pretty good service. It might say an A minus, but what would you say? No, it’s right there. And the important point here, if you don’t communicate what you do for them, they won’t realize the value that you communicate. And so many businesses do this. So it’s not about following up. It’s like, “Hey, do you know someone else we could serve? Hey, how are things going?” Those are all questions. It’s like, “Hey, how are you today? Good, but busy.” It doesn’t go below the surface. This engages them because it has the information and they see progress and it’s tracking them. So when you review this, it’s like, yeah, I would say definitely an A minus or A plus. Now, if it’s a bad score, that’s okay. You can use this proactively to come back and have a corrective action. But typically when you follow this process, the customer experience is going to be up.
And that’s the most important thing Gartner just did a pull. Not product service, it’s customer experience is what they care about. Now as they’re talking about, yes, you’re doing a great job. Now they’re in the mode to purchase more from you. John, we didn’t talk about this when we onboarded you. This is something we can do to help expedite the process. Would you be opposed to looking what this would be like in your company if you implement? No. It’s like, what are they going to say? I mean, they could say, “I don’t want to.” And that’s fine, but most of the time they say yes. And so now you’re putting together something for them and now you just had an upsell or a cross-sell depending upon what it is. And then the referrals is, “Would you be comfortable referring us to another business?” I mean, they’ve already given you all these good scores, of course.
And then you just ask them, “Who do you know that you could refer us to?” Instead of like, “Hey, is there anyone out there that you, well, I’ll think about it,” and then nothing happens and you follow up and follow up. This makes sure with a proactive conversation, being professional, engaging them in a deeper, more meaningful way, that you talk about the things they care about and that’s overcoming their problems and reaching their goals. And they see you as someone who is up here because no other business. Every time I talk to a business, I never talked to a business that had a proactive way that was effective of following up after the onboarding. It was all reactive in firefighting mode. So this company went from 200,000 with upsells, cross-sells and referrals to $3.9 million. That was the most they did in 12 months, in a year.
12 months later using this blue pass to 3.9 million because it engaged them on a deeper level and they saw the value that they were providing for them.
Linda:
That’s awesome. No, that’s great. Thanks, Chaz. That’s helpful. So let’s jump into what I call the rapid fire questions. So I have bad news for you because you have to answer these in one sentence. Maybe I’ll let you have two sentences. What’s the biggest myth about lead generation?
Chaz:
Biggest myth about lead generation is that you get leads from a demographic list. Only 3% of those are really in a place to be interested in making buying decision.
Linda:
Okay. Most common sales mistake companies make today?
Chaz:
Not having a proven selling process and selling system that their salespeople operate within, or if the founder’s selling, they don’t have a proven process.
Linda:
Okay. And then what’s costing companies more poor positioning or poor sales execution?
Chaz:
If you have poor positioning, then you’re going to generate leads. Leads that aren’t qualified. And you’re going to attract the wrong people and repel the right people. So it’s that, but you have to have the sales side. So I see those as two sides of one coin.
Linda:
Awesome, Chaz. So thank you. This conversation hopefully changes the way people think about revenue, right? We know that growth isn’t just about getting more leads and running them through the internal system. It’s actually about maximizing value at every stage of the customer life cycle. Before the meeting, during the meeting, during the sale, and definitely long after the contract signs, which is what we just talked about, because that seems to be a really important area to help businesses grow and sort of uncover those revenue links. So if there’s one thing you want our audience to take away?
Chaz:
It’s the little things done consistently that are killing your business and are causing you anguish. And if you don’t have someone that comes in and points out those little things, then you’re going to keep doing the same thing today that you did yesterday and tomorrow, and you’re not even going to know why you’re not reaching your goals. It’s going to seem like you can’t get through this ceiling. It’s those 1% changes that are made. And with someone from the outside speaking life into your business, you’ll know what to do and what not to do. And that not only will take your business to the next level, it will give you peace of mind as a business owner or founder.
Linda:
That’s great. So Chaz, I’d love for you to share with the audience how they can get in touch with you today.
Chaz:
Yeah, you can reach out to me on my email, [email protected]. First, last name, you see it right here. [email protected], not chaz.horn or chaz. That’s [email protected]. And just put Linda in the subject line so I’ll know who this is because I get lots of spam. Seems like I’m getting more and more these days with people being able to scrape my email and send me things, or just reach out to me on LinkedIn. And again, with LinkedIn, I had 82 connection requests just the other day, and I already saw today I have 15 and it’s early. With Linda, so I know where you’re coming to me from so I can connect with you. Those are two best places to find me.
Linda:
That’s great. So for our audience today, make sure you just don’t listen to what Chaz said today. Just apply it. You can take a look at your business, identify where value’s being lost and ask yourself where are things leaking. So definitely connect with Chaz. Reach out for that business case. I think you’ll find some huge value there. If you like what you heard today, please hit like, share, comment or subscribe. And if you need to connect with him as well, there’s also masteryofb2bsales.com, right Chaz? Is that also another website?
Chaz:
Yeah, that’s my website. I need to tweak it. I mean, people could go – Okay.
Linda:
Well, we will skip that.
Chaz:
Yeah. But if you go to my, here’s a complimentary gift. I wrote the book, the B2B Blueprint to Predictable Sales. So if I could give you the link, if anyone wants that book, it’s complimentary on me. And it walks through some of the things that we’re talking about today. It’ll be very helpful for you.
Linda:
That’s great. Okay, awesome. So if you’re ready for your own B2B Brand180 transformation, visit mill.agency or you can hit lindafanaras.com. We’ll see you at the next episode. Thank you for listening today.
