Case Overstating

"isn't overstating one’s case sometimes the best way of drawing attention to it?"
- Michael Mosbacher, English broadsheet mover

This assertion when selling has something going for it. And something dangerous in it.

For as I've long urged salespeople, "cheating isn't winning".

Overstating works when the exaggeration is legible as exaggeration. When the audience knows you know you've pushed past the line. That's rhetoric as a wink. My recently cited Taleb shouting something's "fragile" when he means 'mildly vulnerable to shocks'. Musk saying "we'll be on Mars in two years" when he means 'Mars is non-negotiable and we're going flat out'. The overstatement signals conviction, not confusion. The listener adjusts. They take up 60pc of the claim and still walk away moved.

Solution selling has a version of this. Call it the 'diagnostic provocation'. You tell a prospect their process is broken when you mean it's suboptimal. You say "your competitors are eating your lunch" when you mean "there's a gap worth closing". The overstatement creates a moment, a small shock, that a calibrated, hedged, accurate statement never would. Accurate statements get nodded at and forgotten.

But here's where the assertion starts to wobble.

In our Enterprise-grade selling domain, your credibility is a key asset. Beyond your company. Beyond even product. You are what they buy. The moment a prospect senses that you've inflated the case - that you've exaggerated the risk, the urgency, the gap - the trust relationship re-prices. Fast. And it doesn't recover at the same speed it collapsed.

Heard the one about trust? It 'arrives on foot, leaves on horseback'.

There's also a buyer sophistication problem. The rhetorical wink only works if both parties are in on it. Junior 'buyers' take the overstatement literally, get anxious, then feel manipulated when reality arrives. Senior 'buyers', the ones with most clout, spot it immediately and file you under "vendor". Neither outcome is useful.

And I blog every now and then on how wizened buyers ignore business case claims. Having never knowingly seen such spreadsheet actually pan out as first sold.

The better frame isn't overstatement. It's precision about the stakes. You're not exaggerating. You're refusing to let the prospect underweight consequences. That's a different move entirely. You're not saying it's worse than it is. You're saying: 'you think this is a level-two problem; I'm telling you it's level five'. That's not overstatement. That's cut-through diagnosis.

Bear in mind, that if you need to exaggerate, you probably haven't done the proper diagnosis yet.

The assertion confuses the symptom with the cure. Yes, bland accurate statements die in the room. But the solution isn't to lie louder. It's to find the true version of the claim that's actually alarming. In part too because in most stalled deals, that version exists and nobody's said it yet.

The buyers who matter have seen the miracle cure. You can also show them your sensitivity analysis instead. With best case, worst case, likely case. If that worse case lands, you don't need to overstate anything.