The discovery framework for unlocking bigger budget pools

AI agents are unlocking new and bigger budget pools. 

As Matthew Scullion, CEO of Matillion, put it on a recent episode of the Get Paid podcast, for every $1 a company spends on software, they spend $8-10 on the labor around it. Think administration, training, implementation, management etc.

Most SaaS companies are used to selling against the $1 software and tools budget pool - a pool that is already stretched thin to cover all of the dozens of tools customers are using to run their businesses. 

The new guard of AI natives are playing differently. They are positioning themselves as labor replacement and fishing in the $10 labor pool. As a result, they’re landing deals that are 2-5x higher ACV than their SaaS predecessors. 

A new way of doing discovery

To unlock bigger budget pools, you need to rethink how you do discovery. 

MEDDPICC taught us to find pain, implicate that pain,  and position our product as the solution. That worked when we were selling software.

But accessing labor budgets requires a different approach. You need to uncover not just the pain, but how they're solving it right now, or how they're planning to solve it in the near future. 

In most cases, the answer is hire someone, or outsource the problem to a BPO.

I caught myself doing this recently. While discussing business gaps with my co-founder Raj, his instinct was to buy or build a tool. Mine? Hire someone to fix it.

"Why are you always hiring people?" he asked.

Good question. My cohort of SaaS founders has been conditioned to solve problems by finding smart people. I was ready to open a $200K role. He was thinking of a $10K AI tool that does the same thing. Same value, wildly different price tag.

If you're not uncovering this default behavior in discovery, you're leaving money on the table.

Three ways to unlock the labor pool

If you're a founder, CEO, CRO or sales leader selling AI capabilities, here's what needs to change:

1. Expand your discovery questions

Find the pain AND how they're currently solving it. Where are those budgets coming from? How large are they? Map the full cost of their current approach - salaries, benefits, training, turnover, BPOs, management overhead etc.

2. Implicate both the pain AND the solution

If they open that headcount or outsource to a BPO, what's the budget impact this year? Next year? What about time-to-productivity? Scaling limitations? Compete with the hiring plan, not your SaaS peers.

3. Leverage the agentic moment

Boards are asking CEOs for agentic strategies. Position yourself as the agentic solution and give your champions something compelling to take back to the board. Your competitors are solving problems, but you’re delivering on a strategic mandate.

More than just a sales problem

If you're serious about capturing labor budgets, your entire company needs to rethink how you adapt strategy to compete with hiring plans. 

• What you're building – Are your AI features positioned as "nice-to-haves" or labor replacement?
• How you're positioning it – Does your messaging speak to software buyers or budget owners?
• How you're marketing it – Are you creating content that resonates with the labor replacement narrative?

The companies that figure this out will command premium pricing and win strategic, high-ACV deals. The ones that don't will continue splitting that $1 software budget with everyone else.

Which pool are you fishing in?

If you're still competing on features and fighting for software budgets, you're playing the old game. The new game is about replacing $200K hires, and capturing a fraction of that labor budget.

The labor pool is 10x bigger. The deals are 2-5x larger. And the buyers are ready.

Are you?

Get back to growth

At Paid, we’ve built the world’s first growth engine for AI, helping companies navigate the transition from SaaS to AI agents. 

Book a demo today to see how Paid can help you get back to growth.