“I would sit down with the VP and build the case around what her team is already spending: hours lost to duplicate entry, the cost of the current tool stack, and the revenue that walks away when inventory or customer data falls through the cracks. At Bravo we learned that the CFO does not need a glossy pitch; they need a number tied to a real operating problem her team can name.”
“The CFO is not asking for a pitch deck; she wants a defensible financial model that maps your product to her team's P&L. I build these cases by anchoring every number to a metric the VP already owns: hours reclaimed, error rates reduced, revenue protected, or compliance cost avoided.”
“I have been the one asked for a business case I did not have, and the answer was never the spreadsheet. The CFO wants to see the pain the VP's team is already feeling translated into money and time, so I would sit with her and build it from her numbers: hours lost, deals delayed, talent attrition, not from my product brochure.”
“The CFO isn't buying your product, she's buying the VP's judgment. Build the case around the time her team loses to the problem you fix, put a dollar figure on it, and let her defend it.”
“I would sit down with the VP and ask what her CFO actually needs to say yes: revenue lift, headcount savings, risk reduction, or speed to value. Then I would build the case around the shortest path to value for her team, not around every feature we could ship.”
“I have been in that exact room: the VP loves it, then finance shows up and the deal stalls because I handed them a feature list instead of a number she could defend. The business case the CFO actually wants is the cost of her team doing nothing right now, and a line that says what changes in revenue, headcount, or risk within one fiscal year.”