Outcome selling, outcome-based selling, business outcomes, customer outcomes – everybody is talking about outcomes and how to achieve them.
Why not provide some structure and clarity to add some value to the discussion?
Let’s look at these five basics.
First, let’s differentiate between outputs and outcomes. The Oxford dictionnary defines these terms:
- “Output is the amount of something produced by a person, machine, or industry”
- “Outcome is the way a thing turns out – a consequence”.
So, outcomes are results, the meaning of outputs. An election is one of the best examples to explain the difference: “It is the outcome of the vote that counts”
Second, let’s define outcomes in a sales context:
An outcome – a desired outcome – has a clear description of how the customer’s future vision of success should look like. In addition to this vision, KPI’s are defined to measure success. An outcome has an executive owner, a person who is accountable to change the current state to be able to achieve the desired future state.
This executive owner depends on several impacted stakeholders. These roles are critical to achieve the desired outcome. So, an outcome is very often a cross-functional endeavor, across business and technology.
Additionally, outcomes are often part of a strategic initiative, where we also find our executive owner. Then the journey is important, because an outcome is not achieved when a vendor has implemented technology, this is only one element. It’s key to success to have the whole journey in mind, which is always an opportunity for vendors to create more value for their customers.
Third, let’s translate that into a selling situation …
You might sell the world’s best CRM system to your customers. This system, and all the customizing activities, are outputs. The shiny new CRM system has a specific meaning for a specific customer, which is their desired outcome. One customer’s desired outcome is an increase in sales productivity of 10%. Another customer defines an outcome differently – e.g. increasing revenue with new services in new markets by 20%.
Whatever it is, you can work with some general questions (to be prepared via social selling) which help you to better understand the customer’s initial challenges and their desired outcomes. Questions how to model a customer’s challenge can be about what and how describe the relevance, who and why the context and when and where describe the timeliness.
It’s important to be consequent and to work always with the end in mind. The design point to create the best value for your customer is your customer’s desired outcome – it’s not your portfolio, which is output, if not embedded into the context of the customer’s outcome.
Working backwards from this outcome– ideally defining it together with the customer – will not only increase your perception as a strategic partner, it could also increase your deal volume, because based on the holistic outcome view, you will identify additional services to create more value for your customer.
In general, vendors cannot create these desired outcomes alone for their customers. Outcome selling is not competitive, it’s collaborative, and actually a perfect scenario for the intangible economy. Collaborating means value co-creation with customers and with partners to help them to achieve their desired outcome.
Fourth, how are successful outcome sellers different? Do they have any specific knowledge? Any specific skills?
Outcome sellers need business acumen. According to Wikipedia, business acumen is “…keenness and quickness in understanding and dealing with a business situation in a manner that is likely to lead to a good outcome.”
Business acumen works backwards from the customer’s journey. It is a “must have” for outcome sellers, to be able to switch conversations from what services are and do to what they mean in the context of a desired outcome.
Then, the sellers need industry expertise. It’s about understanding the specific color of an industry’s language, speaking this language, understanding the industry’s core processes and core challenges, trends and innovations on a high level – also from the perspective of our customer’s customers. Social networks, groups and communities are perfect to remain up-to-date and to build the necessary industry relationships.
Outcome sellers also need the capability to analyze and to synthesize – in a balanced way.
“Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic, or substance, into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it.”
“…the noun synthesis refers to a combination of two or more entities that together form something new. Alternately, it refers to the creating of something by artificial means.”
Fifth, let’s see why allocating the right resources and capabilities, especially at the beginning of the customer’s journey, are key for success.
In the very early phases, when it’s all about creating a “why change” conversation, making the customers aware of a problem, a challenge and the entire impact of that challenge, you need a lot of business acumen, industry knowledge, analyzing and synthesizing capabilities as described above.
For a sales manager, it’s important to optimize the resources accordingly. Who are the people who can be successful in these early phases, how does a successful outcome selling team look like? Often, a person with the relevant relationships helps to open the door for specialists and collaborators who are used to share complex know-how to different audiences – but often these people don’t have the necessary relationships. It’s important that the collaborating sales role should lead an outcome deal, after the door is opened and the first call was successful, and next steps were scheduled. It’s more effective to allocate the people with the excellent relationships to open other doors regarding other challenges with different specialists and collaborators.
Given an organization’s comfort zone is more re-active than active prospecting, it will be very important to identify the rare skills within the organization and to allocate these resources accordingly to increase sales performance and customer value. Especially in such a comfort zone scenario in a named account strategy, it’s important to have a flexible, focused account framework in place. The organization needs to know in which accounts, which relationships in which quality are existing – to allocate growth strategies and resources accordingly for more customer value, and to create new business effectively.
To sum up: Outcome selling is a perfect way to create more value for customers, to create new business in a systematic way. But be aware of the necessary change effort…