What it is
Stake is the reason someone would want to move at all. Not your reason. His. And those are not the same.
In the Fire Triangle, stake is the fuel: no fuel, no fire, however many matches you strike.
A need is something someone wants to have. A stake is something he loses if nothing happens.
That difference decides where you look. Look for needs and you end up with products. Look for stake and you end up with a decision.
And note whose stake it is. What the company gains is rarely enough. A decision-maker also weighs: will this cost me my weekends, will my team give me grief, and how do I look if it goes wrong.
How to hear that it is missing
- He asks no questions. Someone who feels a stake wants to know how it works.
- He agrees with everything. Agreement without friction usually means it doesn’t touch him.
- “We really should do that at some point.”
- He passes you on to someone else without staying involved himself.
- You talk more than he does.
The hardest test is in chapter 11: can you write down in one sentence what it personally gains or saves him, in his own words? If you can’t, you haven’t found the stake.
What to do instead
You look for it; you don’t make it. Stake you invent yourself is an argument — and arguments are exactly what doesn’t work.
The questions that surface it aren’t about your solution but about his situation:
- What happens if nothing changes here for the next six to twelve months?
- Who, or which department, suffers most from it further down the line?
- Beyond the company numbers: what would solving this mean for your own working day?
Then let the silence fall. The answer that comes after a short pause is the one that matters.
And if the answer is “not much”: there is no stake, and it stops here. That isn’t a lost sale but a cheap conclusion.
What not to do
Give more arguments. A second presentation. A better brochure. A calculation showing the return.
That feels like adding fuel and it isn’t. You are talking about your solution while nothing is missing from his information. What is missing is a reason that belongs to him.
If the stake is missing, trust and urgency will not make up for it. You can have both fully in order and still never get a deal.
What stake is not
Stake is not enthusiasm and not a general need. It is what this one person personally gains or loses.
- Not the organisation's interest. That is in every business case and it moves no one. He is not deciding on behalf of a company; he is deciding with his own name under it.
- Not something you create. You cannot generate it with a better argument or a sharper presentation.
You do not create stake. You find it.
If you cannot find it, the conversation stops there. Trust and urgency do not repair a missing stake.
The other two conditions
All three have to be present at once. How you establish which one is missing is on diagnostic selling.