The Billion Dollar Question.
It isn't a question. It's a rehearsed play that makes a senior buyer turn their own private gut-feel into a hard number, in front of their peers, and indict the status quo on the spot.
Worked the same way since 2008. Below is how Mark Edwards, who invented it, actually delivers it — and how to build your own.
Companion tool · the question factoryShare your web domain.
Get your BDQ, PDQ.
We'll read your site, work out who you sell to and what they're pretending is handled, and send back one question built to Mark's standard — plus the answer we expect you'll hear.
"What percentage of your sales force can confidently deliver your value proposition to a CxO?"
The team as stated
Gut-feel, said out loud
Against 75 who can't
KQ → MDQ → BDQ
Nine moves — run in order.
- 1
Know Barry before you walk in
Persona work before "ICP" was a term. Barry: around 50, sales director of an IT or telecoms business, 30 to 900 reps. Blue suit, red tie, Range Rover, marathon medals, a MasterChef photo on the desk. Painted so vividly the room nods — we've all met Barry. Recognition is the ground the play stands on.
- 2
Take the problems from the floor
Draw out the pains and write them up: rising targets, pipeline, forecasting, slippage, poor performance, attrition. Then quietly park the ones you can't answer (attrition) and keep the room on performance — the thing you're about to pivot into.
- 3
Ask for the pen
Stand, ask permission, take the whiteboard. Permission first. Then the room is yours, and the artefact you're about to draw will outlive the meeting.
- 4
Deliver the question in fragments
Build it piece by piece, in abbreviations — SF, VP, CxO — so that by the end you've effectively asked the same question six or seven times. Asked plainly seven times you'd be shown the door. Broken into building blocks, the repetition lands as weight, and Barry has to pause and compute.
- 5
Load the qualifiers to drive the number down
Watch the ladder. Not "deliver your value proposition" (a bigger number), but "confidently deliver" (smaller), then "confidently deliver to a CxO" (smaller again — the chef's kiss). Each word ratchets the honest answer lower, toward something low enough to sting.
- 6
Force a number
Barry has no dashboard for this, so he answers on gut feel. That's the point. The BDQ always demands a number — a percentage, or a one-to-ten. It takes a subjective, private feeling and turns it into an objective figure you can work with.
- 7
Validate, then make it bodies
Barry says 25%. Blow a little smoke: "that's exactly what I'd expect." Then convert it — 25% of 100 reps is 25 people. Then draw the pie: the 25 who can present against the 75 who can't. The abstraction becomes a picture of the problem.
- 8
Collect the BDA
The only purpose of a BDQ is to get a BDA — a Billion Dollar Answer. And the answer is astonishingly consistent: 10, 15, 20%, across every room, for fifteen years, against an aspiration of 80-plus. That low, self-indicting number is the win. It's believable precisely because Barry is cynical and honest about his own team.
- 9
Move latent to active, then offer the vision
You go in knowing a 50-year-old sales director already has this problem (latent). The question drags it into the open (active). Only then do you turn to "let me show you how we fix this" — the vision of a solution. The set-piece ends where the pitch begins.
"The smell of Aramis leaves with me. This remains."
The mechanics under the play.
Subjective, made objective
Gut feel is fuzzy and easy to dodge. A number is not. Forcing a figure converts a feeling nobody would commit to into a fact the buyer has now said out loud.
Repetition in disguise
Six or seven passes at the same question, hidden inside the fragmented delivery, so it registers as gravity rather than nagging.
The board isn't aware
Leadership assumes this is handled — they've seen the decks. The question reveals the gap between what the board believes and what the number says.
It leaves a residue
Drawn on the wall, the play persists after the meeting. The artefact keeps selling once the seller has left the building.
Where the question sits.
No need
They genuinely don't need what you sell. Not your buyer.
Latent need
The problem exists but they underrate it, can't be bothered, or tried before.
Active need
The number makes it real and urgent. Now they want it solved.
Vision of a solution
"Let me show you how we fix this." The pitch begins.
The whole job of the BDQ is the jump from latent to active. Everything before it sets that up; everything after it depends on it. Straight from Mike Bosworth's Solution Selling, with a zero beneath it.
Killer Question
2008. The first name for it. He just thought it was a killer question.
Million Dollar
The first eight presentations all converted. "I'm going to do a million dollars with this in time."
Billion Dollar
A couple of years on. Not a revenue claim. The ceiling isn't the question, it's the delivery.
"The limitation is me, and not enough Barrys. There's not enough me's. The question works."
One output, anonymised.
This is what comes back when we run the method on a single company. The name is withheld; everything else is as delivered.
A mid-market cyber-resilience platform
Sells backup and recovery into enterprise IT. Buyer: an infrastructure director who has already bought a recovery product and believes the box is ticked.
- Entry point
- Latent need — bought, never truly tested.
- Qualifiers loaded
- "clean and malware-free", "inside your target", "end to end".
"What percentage of your critical systems could you restore clean and malware-free inside your recovery-time target — and when did you last test it end to end?"
"Single digits. And we've never tested it clean."
Said out loud, in front of peers, by the person who signed off the current solution. That's the jump from latent to active — and the point at which the pitch is allowed to begin.
Five rules for building your own.
- 1
Demand a number
A percentage or a one-to-ten scale. If the answer can stay a feeling, it isn't a BDQ yet.
- 2
Load the qualifiers
Add the words that drive the honest answer down: "confidently", "at C-level", "end to end", "today".
- 3
Enter at latent need
Pick a buyer who already has the problem but underrates it, and aim the question at raising it to active.
- 4
Know the answer you want
Write the BDA first — the low, self-indicting figure — then reverse-engineer the question that produces it.
- 5
Leave a residue
Draw it. Make something that stays in the room and keeps working after you leave.
Share your web domain.
Get your BDQ, PDQ.
One question, built to the standard above: a number demanded, the qualifiers loaded, aimed at a buyer who already has the problem and underrates it. Plus the BDA we expect you'll hear back.
The set-piece and the Barry example are the work of Mark Edwards, who invented the Billion Dollar Question and has delivered it since 2008. Documented from his own account, in his method.