Recently a sales leader asked me for some advice about selling business outcomes versus solutions:
Dear Sherri:
A customer is angry because she says her company is not receiving the perceived benefits of the solution we sold them. She said that, although we were very good at showing them how our solution met their needs, nobody from our team helped them track the business outcomes to make sure that they received the benefits we told them they should be receiving. This has impacted her ability to demonstrate measurable results from her decision to go with our solution. Our whole account relationship is in jeopardy over this. If we lose this account, even my job could be in jeopardy. What would you recommend we do?
Sincerely,
Sales VP in Jeopardy
This is becoming the new normal: there’s actually a disconnect between the value we say we deliver and what customers are actually experiencing.
Based on conversations with our clients, many B2B enterprises continue to struggle in two ways:
Sales executives tell us one of their biggest frustrations is establishing trusted advisor relationships and competing at the strategic level. Reps have to be able to ask the right questions and understand what customers expect in terms of business outcomes and how they measure success. The problem is, many sales reps are not incorporating into their sales vernacular what truly matters to customers in terms of business outcomes.
We all want to be treated with respect and honor. That’s a basic human need. So, if you promise something, you’d better deliver it. Delivering it means not just tossing the implementation over to your professional services or onboarding engineer. It means sales, service, support, and product development all need to come together to develop a shared understanding of how to deliver the business outcome expected by this customer.
We need to do a better job at making a difference – and it’s not going to happen by delivering “insights” alone. It’s not going to happen by delivering a great “customer experience.” It’s not even going to happen by delivering added value and being the “trusted advisor.”
Don’t get me wrong; those things are important but, today, they only get you to “meets expectations” on the buyer’s checklist. The company that is going to truly make a difference is the one that has figured out how to deliver business outcomes and not just solutions.
So how do you make the shift from a solutions-focused to outcomes-focused sales organization?
Is focusing on outcomes something you should be doing? Absolutely. When Oracle analyzed the impact of shifting their customer relationships from purely a transactional relationship to one where the focus was on how to make customers successful, the incremental revenue rose by 110 percent. It makes sense: when customers see you are advocating for the business outcomes and not just how your solution solves a need, they are more likely to make investments at a higher, more strategic level. And that’s a WOW for them – and you too!
Today’s post is by Sherri Sklar, CEO of GrowthTera, a consulting firm that helps organizations accelerate growth by elevating their performance to WOW. Hear her present “Sales Planning: Strategies that Leave Your Competition in the Dust” live at the Sales 3.0 Conference in Las Vegas on September 18 and 19.
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