Decode the P&L → Upgrade Your Sales POV

Think like an operator, sell like an executive.

Credit: FidelCacheFlow (also see: Fidel’s SDR contracting Cohort)

This post hit me.

Fidel hits on something sellers forget when we’re deep in pipeline, advancing deals, or chasing signatures. What might look like a great opportunity to us often looks completely different to a CXO or GM. Once you start looking through their lens, everything changes.

Selling in a business and running a business are two VERY different perspectives.

We’ve covered how to read a 10k, connecting buyer motivation to compensation, and understanding how a business makes money. However, were mostyl tactical and piecemeal.

Over the past few months, my approach to prospecting and building narratives has leaned heavily into financial analysis. It’s taken me down a bit of a rabbit hole and I’ve been geeking out onit. It’s helped me understand the actual mechanics of a prospect’s P&L, forcing me to think like someone running a business, not someone selling into it.

“How would a CFO look at this?”

It’s probably why I gravitate to writers like Matt Harney

SaaSletter

or

OnlyCFO

. It’s helped me think in terms of patterns, trends, and financial priorities - even though numbers aren’t my strong suit.

The mindset shift has been helping me filter out the signal noise and obtain:

• Higher order values in the past 6 months

• Senior Executive Intros

• Cleaner TAM

• Accelerated Expansion

Common Patterns & Applications

It’s been helping me connect the dots and see trends across accounts:

• Cost discipline / OPEX control → efficiency & faster payback.

• Volume-led growth → speed to learn, launch, iterate.

• Margin expansion → mix improvement and waste reduction.

• Cash flow focus → lower time-to-value and less working capital tied up.

There’s applications outside of sales too, helping evaluate:

• Opportunities for career growth

• Investment opportunities

• The value of a product/company in basic terms

The system I’m operationalizing

Getting more comfortable with P&L’s has helped me spot trends, develop stronger POV’s, and easily translate that into narratives across all lines of the business:

1. Read the business engine. Revenue streams, gross margin, OPEX, cash conversion.

2. Spot the current emphasis. Efficiency? Mix? Volume-led growth? Margin expansion?

3. Map initiatives. What projects unlock those priorities this quarter?

4. Translate to value. “Here’s how this improves margin/throughput/cash.”

5. Layer the narrative:

   • C-suite: outcomes & capital efficiency

   • Midline operators: systems, workflows, SLAs

   • BTL users: jobs-to-be-done, speed, error reduction

AI helps, but synthesis is the edge

Tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and ChatAE make it easy to gather the information. Use them to speed collection. But invest time in synthesis—deciding what matters and how it ties to your buyer’s metrics.

If you don’t understand, you can’t explain.
If you can’t explain, you can’t communicate.
If you can’t communicate, you can’t sell.

That’s the craft.

Next week I’ll break down the financials of an org, showing you how to use AI to analyze them, and turn that into a POV.

Credit: Chris Orlob

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If you have any questions on this topic or thoughts, shoot me a DM or email to andrew@hackingsales.xyz.

As always, thanks for reading and see you all next week.

-Andrew K

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