Product Features Don’t Create Urgency. Use the Tangible Loss Framework like Vanta.
Security compliance was only required by the biggest enterprise companies so startups didn’t budget for SOC 2. Spending 10 months and $100,000 made it too easy to avoid.
“We’ll do it at some point, but not now.”
Vanta built a shortcut that templatized the SOC 2 process so startups could be compliant in 1/10th of the time for 1/10th of the cost. But that still wasn’t enough to motivate them.
“We’ll do it at some point, but not now.”
That’s a common story in emerging categories: We create a truly innovative way to do something faster, cheaper or with less disruption, but that isn’t enough to meaningfully budge demand that’s stuck in “not yet.”
Instead of focusing on product features, Vanta unlocked demand by animating the moment when the absence of their product would cause painful, quantifiable loss:
Imagine your sales team closes a huge enterprise deal. Then procurement sends the security questionnaire that requires a SOC 2 Type II report. You don’t have one. The deal dies, your competitor wins, your market share stumbles.
“Achieve compliance faster” ❌
“Stop losing deals you’ve already won” ✅
The first is about future benefit. The second makes the loss tangible today.
When building in a category where prospects don’t feel urgency, we can’t manufacture it with features and benefits.
Let’s dissect the Tangible Loss Framework for lessons we can apply in our own businesses.
Becoming a “Must-Have” with Tangible Loss Framework
From the Four Waters Framework viewpoint: Vanta was at a stage called “Uncharted Waters” where the market didn’t recognize SOC 2 compliance for startups as urgent or worth solving. Their primary competitor wasn’t another company, it was a lack of urgency to solve a problem that hadn’t started to bother them yet.
The Tangible Loss Framework that we can derive from Vanta has four steps.
1. Identify the Loss Event
What do prospects lose if they don’t have you? Notice the verb choice of “lose” vs “fail to gain.” It’s intentional.
“You’ll gain customer trust with SOC 2.” ❌
“You’ll be compliant with industry standards.” ❌
“You’ll lose enterprise deals without SOC 2.” ✅
Research on loss aversion explains that people feel losses 2x as intensely as equivalent gains. Losing something, especially something you’ve fought to earn, is a potent motivator.
I’ve had a similar experience with Recurrent, where commercial EV sellers saw battery information as nice to have but not essential. Electric cars made up only 10% of their sales so touting the benefits or potential upside was not enough to unstick inaction.
Identifying the loss event created urgency:
“You’re undervaluing every EV you sell by $2,000 to $5,000 because you don’t understand the battery. That means you’re leaving $3.5 million on the table each year.”
Suddenly the 10% problem became a seven-figure hole in their bottom line.
Lesson: The loss event must be tangible. “You might lose deals someday” doesn’t drive action.
Common misstep: You can’t invent a hypothetical loss. It has to be something they’ve already felt the pain of at least once.
Test it: Map your customer’s worst days in the last year. What went wrong and how could you have helped to avoid them?
2. Quantify the Stakes
Vague statements don’t create urgency. Make the loss concrete and measurable. If they can’t quantify the loss you’re preventing, you can’t build a business case.
What deals are being lost or delayed? (Revenue)
What does each week/month/year of waiting cost? (Delay)
What market share would be lost to competitors moving faster? (Competition)
How much time and money is wasted on manual processes? (Efficiency)
Vanta didn’t just say compliance was important. Vanta showed that a traditional SOC 2 process would cost $100,000+ and take 6-12 months. During that time, how many enterprise deals would stall or die? If a company closes $5M in enterprise ARR per year and 10% of prospects ask for SOC 2, that’s $500,000 in pipeline risk.
It’s specific and measurable. Those are the business cases that get a CFO’s attention.
Lesson: Everything needs a concrete number because “faster sales cycles” is too vague to be urgent.
Common misstep: Industry averages are only better than nothing. It’s easier than ever to estimate actual business value from publicly available data.
Test it: Build a simple calculator for your target personas to quantify the stakes.
Revenue: Deal sizes and number of deals affected
Cost: Penalties or inefficiency or labor
Timeline: How often these loss events occur
3. Align with the Calendar
Manufactured urgency fails with business customers. That’s not what we’re doing here. Prospects see through it. True urgency comes from their business’s calendar so it’s your job to align with it.
In several of the executive interviews that I listened to while studying Vanta, CEO Christina Cacioppo said that they researched a vertical until they could predict 75% of a prospect’s answers.
That helped Vanta align its marketing and sales motions with prospect’s businesses.
Lesson: Don’t try to create artificial deadlines. Find the real ones already in your prospect’s business cycle.
Test it: Map your customer’s businesses to a calendar to understand when loss events are most likely to occur or feel most urgent.
Fiscal year ends
Budgeting periods
Regulatory deadlines
Development cycles
Customer renewals
Industry conference seasons
Step 4: Offer Crash Detection
My truck applied its own brakes when I didn’t see a cyclist weaving through parked cars the other day. The rush of relief was overwhelming because I instantly saw two very different outcomes.
Crash detection is what we’re trying to offer.
Vanta’s core promise was speed. Traditional SOC 2 took 6-12 months. Vanta delivered it in weeks. That meant the difference between losing a deal in the pipeline and closing it.
Lesson: Position yourself as the solution to an active problem, not a tool for future optimization.
Test it: Audit your website and key marketing materials. Do they present a product or crash detection?
When This Doesn’t Work
Loss aversion isn’t universal. The Tangible Loss Framework breaks when:
The loss is hypothetical
The timing is distant
The loss is industry-wide
You don’t have credibility
If prospects don’t believe the loss is real or don’t believe you can prevent it, the entire framework collapses. Your marketing goes from helpful to manipulative.
Lesson: Don’t weaponize fear you can’t credibly back up. It erodes trust faster than it creates urgency.
Test it:
Are prospects already experiencing this loss?
Can you prove your solution prevents it?
Is the timeline urgent enough to overcome inertia?
Vanta hit $100M ARR by making compliance urgent. They weren’t manipulating people into believing it mattered. The urgency was always there, Vanta just made it visible.
Your opportunity is the same: Find where your category already has hidden urgency.
Make the loss visible. Quantify the stakes. Show the timing. Offer crash detection.
That’s not manipulation. That’s clarity.