When the Buyer Says, “We’ll Just Build It With Claude”

I’ve been thinking about the challenge a lot of SaaS sellers are hearing:
“We’ll just build it with Claude.”

One tactic I’ve seen work well* is getting the actual practitioner into the buying conversation early. First call if you can.

Because the buyer and the practitioner are often looking at this very differently.

The buyer may be thinking:
Can we consolidate the tech stack?
Can we save some money?
Can we show the higher-ups we’re actually using AI?

All reasonable.

But the practitioner is usually the one who knows where all the bodies are buried.

They know the weird workflows. The exceptions. The stuff that looks easy from 30,000 feet but gets ugly fast once you actually have to use it every day.

And they’re probably the one who’s going to have to live with whatever gets built.

That makes them pretty important (and helpful to you overcoming this) when someone says, “We can just build this ourselves.”

As the seller, I don’t think the answer is to immediately push back and explain why your product is better.

Get the practitioner involved.

Ask what would actually need to be rebuilt.
Ask where the complexity is.
Ask what happens after the first version works.

“Can Claude build something that does this?” is probably the wrong question and too confrontational.

Trying to get everyone in the conversation understand what “this” actually is? is where you want to get them. That'll be your ah-ha moment.

*Thanks to Holly Dunne for helping me understand the value of this tactic and showing how it's helped her team; and with this post.