A sales argument is an attempt to create demand out of thin air. It starts with what you sell and works backwards to a story that makes it look inevitable. You usually see it pushed by demand gen teams and so-called category creators.

It's an argument that makes a problem, a way of working, your offer, or your whole category feel important, urgent, or necessary, and pushes buyers to value it, prioritize it, buy it, or adopt it.

Its favorite target is the mythical "problem-unaware" buyer. These people have been doing the job for months, even years, and somehow this supposedly urgent problem was never even recognized as a problem.

It can sound smart. It can give you beliefs, facts, predictions, opinions, practical tips, evidence, and even a real enemy. None of that changes anything if it's only there to set up the sale. A sophisticated pitch is still a pitch. And yes, the problem can be completely real. That changes nothing if the whole thing is there to make you prioritize it.

The most basic version just keeps nagging you about how much your problem hurts and what it's costing you, until you finally make it a priority. Fancier versions lean on fearmongering, pressure tactics, threats, new mandates nobody asked for, or some historic shift in the world that suddenly makes the product necessary. You've seen it in every "X is dead," "Welcome to the Y era," and "Z changes everything" post.

Here are just a few ways it shows up (there are hundreds more):

A payments company tells you to start selling in every country you can. Great advice, until you're drowning in foreign sales tax, which, what do you know, they can handle for you. Their advice is basically a trap.
A workflow tool publishes a manifesto about a brand new job your team is suddenly on the hook for, and their product happens to be the only way to do it.
An analytics vendor surveys 300 CFOs and finds out the exact problem they solve is everyone's top priority this year.
A security company tells you every company like yours will get breached within the year, and here's how not to be one of them.
A sales tool coins a new category, slaps a five-stage maturity model on it, and you're stuck at stage one.
A hiring platform tells you your real problem isn't your offer or your team, it's your process, the one thing their product fixes.

Unlike a genuine POV, a sales argument can't stand on its own. Take away the whole story the vendor needs you to swallow, and that's a lot more than the product. It's the crisis, the trend, the urgency, the new job, the "this should be your priority," the stack the vendor's asking you to rip out, whatever it is. Then picture a buyer who rejects all of it, including doing it themselves without the product.

With a sales argument, this content has nothing to offer. The facts and tips are still on the page, but they were only ever there to set up the sale. With a genuine POV, there's still a real argument about how the world works, and it changes how people see it or do their jobs whether they ever buy or not.

It’s all POV, right? Nope.