Business Growth

The Two Wrong Solutions Close

Most founders sell as if their offer exists in a vacuum. They explain what they do, why it works, and what it costs, then wait for a yes. The prospect, meanwhile, is running a completely different calculation. They are not asking "is this good?" They are asking "is this better than the two other things I was already thinking about doing?" The founder is answering a question the buyer is not asking. Every prospect walks into a sales conversation with a short list of alternatives already loaded. Usually it is some version of: do it in-house, hire someone cheaper, or do nothing for now. Those alternatives are the real competition, and most of them never get spoken aloud. They sit in the buyer's head as unvoiced objections, and unvoiced objections are the ones that kill deals after the call, when you are not in the room to answer them. The actual question is not "how do I make my offer sound good?" It is "how do I win against the specific alternatives already in my prospect's head, including the ones they haven't said?" Name the two wrong solutions your prospect is already weighing, show why each one fails for their specific situation, and position your offer as the third option that survives the comparison. This pre-handles the objection before it can surface, which matters because the objections that sink deals are the silent ones, raised after the call, when you cannot respond. Gong's research found that closed-won deals actually contain more objections and concerns raised during the cycle, not fewer, surfacing friction correlates with winning, burying it correlates with losing .

Joshua Agonya Pi'Rwot

By Joshua Agonya Pi'Rwot

Founder, Business Growth Accelerator

Executive summary

Every prospect is already weighing other options. Name the two they are considering, show why each fails, and pre-handle the objection before it can stall your deal.

Section 1

Why the unvoiced alternative is the real competition

A prospect rarely says "I'm also considering just having my ops manager handle this." They think it, weigh it against your proposal privately, and if it wins the silent comparison, you get a polite "we've decided to hold off." You never find out you lost to an in-house workaround, because the buyer never told you that was the contest. This is the structural problem with selling in a vacuum: you defend against the objections you hear and lose to the ones you do not. Gong's objection data is clear that engaging friction beats avoiding it. Top reps respond to objections by asking questions 54.3% of the time, compared with 31% for average reps, and deals that close often carry more surfaced concerns, not fewer . The lesson is not that objections are bad. It is that objections you can see are manageable, and objections you cannot see are fatal. The Two Wrong Solutions Close is a mechanism for dragging the silent alternatives into the light where you can address them. Consider a fractional-CFO firm pitching a $7,500-per-month engagement to a founder. The founder is privately weighing two alternatives: hire a cheaper bookkeeper, or keep muddling through in a spreadsheet for another two quarters. If the firm just pitches its methodology, the founder nods, then quietly picks the bookkeeper because it is cheaper and the firm never argued against it. If the firm names both alternatives and shows why each fails at this stage of the business, the bookkeeper and the spreadsheet stop being safe defaults.

Section 2

Finding the two wrong solutions

The two wrong solutions are almost always drawn from a predictable set. For most service businesses, the alternatives a prospect is weighing fall into three buckets, and your job is to identify which two are live for this specific buyer. You surface which two are live the same way you surface anything in a good call: you ask. "Before we go further, what else are you considering, including just handling it internally?" A prospect who trusts you will tell you. Then you have named the contest, and you can compete in it instead of against a phantom.

Section 3

Selling against the wrong solutions without trashing them

There is a wrong way to run this close: attack the alternatives with contempt. "A cheap bookkeeper will ruin you" makes the buyer defensive, because they were considering it, and you just called their judgment poor. The move is to validate the logic of each alternative, then show precisely where it breaks for their situation. You are not saying the alternative is stupid. You are saying it solves a different problem than the one they actually have. The pattern for each wrong solution has three beats. First, steel-man it: state honestly why it is a reasonable thing to consider. Second, locate the specific failure point for this buyer's situation, not in general. Third, connect that failure to a cost they have already named. "Hiring a bookkeeper is a sensible first instinct, and for a lot of companies it is the right call. The place it breaks for you is that your problem is not recording transactions, it is that you cannot forecast cash three months out, and a bookkeeper does not build the forecast. That forecast gap is the thing you told me is keeping you up before payroll runs." Now the alternative is not attacked, it is simply revealed as an answer to a different question. This is where the anchoring research earns its place. Studies on decoy and comparison effects show that a buyer's choice is shaped heavily by the set of options they are comparing against, when the alternatives in the consideration set are clearly framed, the target option looks stronger by contrast . By naming the two wrong solutions yourself, you control the comparison set instead of leaving the buyer to build it privately, where your offer may not even be in frame.

Section 4

The proposal that bakes it in

The Two Wrong Solutions Close is not only a live-call move. It belongs in the written proposal too, as a short "options considered" section. This does two things. It shows the buyer you understood the full decision they were making, which builds trust, and it survives the forward, when the proposal gets sent to a skeptical partner or CFO who was not on the call, the section pre-answers the exact objection that person will raise. Structure it as a compact comparison, honest about trade-offs. A three-row table: the two alternatives and your recommendation, with a column for what each optimizes for and a column for where it fails at this stage. The honesty is the persuasion. A buyer who sees you fairly represent the cheaper option, and still make the case for yours, trusts the case more than if you had pretended the alternatives did not exist. Naming the trade-offs and where you make money is the reframe-honesty move that earns the deal, and it hands off cleanly into a systematized close rather than a document that gets picked apart later.

Section 5

Where this close backfires

Run this poorly and it backfires two ways. First, if you invent alternatives the buyer was not actually considering, you plant doubts that were not there and hand them new reasons to hesitate. Only sell against the wrong solutions that are genuinely live, which is why you have to ask rather than assume. Second, if you steel-man an alternative too well and then fail to clearly land why it breaks, you have just made the buyer's case for the cheaper option. The close requires you to be honest about the alternative and decisive about its failure point. Half the move is worse than none of it. There is also a qualification signal here. If a prospect's honest answer is that the cheaper option or the do-nothing option genuinely solves their problem, that is not a deal to fight for, it is a deal to disqualify. The Two Wrong Solutions Close only works when your offer really is the right third option. When it is not, the most profitable move is to say so and preserve the relationship.

Section 6

Key takeaways

• Your real competition is the set of alternatives already in the buyer's head, and the deadliest ones are never spoken aloud. Surface them or lose to them silently. • Surfacing objections correlates with winning. Gong found closed-won deals carry more raised concerns, and top reps meet objections with questions 54.3% of the time versus 31% for average reps . • The consideration set shapes the choice. Framing the alternatives yourself controls the comparison; leaving it to the buyer means your offer may not even be in frame . • Steel-man each wrong solution, then locate its specific failure for this buyer's situation and tie it to a cost they already named. Do not attack, reveal. • Bake an honest "options considered" section into the written proposal so it pre-answers the skeptic who reads it after the call.

FAQ

Direct answers for operators.

Won't naming cheaper options just remind the prospect they exist?

The prospect already knows the cheaper options exist, they were weighing them before your call. Naming them does not introduce the idea, it lets you shape how the buyer evaluates it. Leaving them unnamed does not make them disappear, it just moves the comparison somewhere you cannot influence.

How do I get a prospect to tell me what alternatives they're considering?

Ask directly and make it safe: "To give you the most useful recommendation, what else are you weighing, including handling it in-house or waiting?" Framing it as helping them decide, rather than beating a competitor, lowers the guard. A buyer who trusts you will name the real alternatives, and that answer is often more useful than anything else in the call.

What if the honest answer is that the cheaper option really would work for them?

Then say so and disqualify the deal. Fighting to win a prospect who is genuinely better served by a cheaper option damages the relationship and usually the delivery. The Two Wrong Solutions Close is a tool for cases where your offer truly is the right third option, not a script for overriding a buyer's correct instinct.

Is this the same as trashing competitors?

No, and the distinction matters. Trashing competitors attacks the alternative and puts the buyer on the defensive for considering it. This close validates why each alternative is reasonable, then shows where it fails for the buyer's specific situation. The tone is fair analysis, not disparagement, which is exactly what makes it credible.

Joshua Agonya Pi'Rwot

Written by

Joshua Agonya Pi'Rwot

Founder, Business Growth Accelerator · Country Director, AVODA Group Uganda · EMBA

Joshua helps service-business operators turn scattered marketing into a clear path from first attention to booked call. He is Founder of Business Growth Accelerator and Country Director of AVODA Group Uganda.