Change your sales priorities to improve your sales results

Hello Sales Reset Community

How many salespeople are genuinely interested in the success their customers achieve with the products and services they’ve sold?

Let me tell you a story.

It was in the early nineties. I’d been an independent sales trainer for a few years. I’d trained hundreds of salespeople face-to-face, and people enjoyed my courses.

I vividly recall the moment. I was in a meeting with a client. We were talking about the next sales training we were planning.

And I realised I’d never asked them about the impact of the previous training on their sales results! We’d been too busy talking about the training I was selling. 😳

Here I am, thirty years later. I’m still trying to fully understand all the implications of salespeople talking about what they’re selling, not the outcomes customers need.

This is HUGE!

Recently, I’ve started using the phrase "Customer Success Selling" to summarise this approach to winning new business.

Let’s get into it!

How you'll improve sales results this week

• Why most salespeople don’t talk about outcomes

• WIIFM: Why focus on customer outcomes?

• Potential Challenges

• How to practice customer success selling this week

• End of Week - Reflective Practice

Why most salespeople don’t talk about outcomes

It’s much easier talking about what you’re selling than customer outcomes.

You're on safe ground when you’re talking about what you’re selling. You know what you’re talking about. It’s the conversation that customers expect. And they have so many questions! So we end up talking about what we’re selling.

Outcomes conversations are challenging and require a depth of knowledge, insight, and skills that many salespeople don’t have.

All too often, the people we speak with don’t really know the outcomes they’re seeking. How could they? If they’ve not made a purchase like this before, they don’t have the required knowledge or experience.

Significant investments affect various people differently, each with a different perspective on outcomes. Which of these outcomes are salespeople supposed to prioritise?

Some salespeople deliberately allow false expectations to persist. This might be because they know their competitors' strengths and their product’s relative weaknesses. They prefer to emphasise their strengths even if expectations about outcomes remain unclear.

Many salespeople prioritise hitting their sales target. They believe that achieving customer outcomes is somebody else’s job.

WIIFM: Why focus on customer outcomes?

WIIFM: What’s in it for me? Why should you focus on customer outcomes?

1. Happy customers buy again and again: The first sale is the hardest. Why would customers go anywhere else if they know they can trust you and your products and services to deliver the outcomes they need?

2. Happy customers tell other people. You'll get more referrals as you develop your reputation for delivering outcomes reliably. As everybody knows, referrals are the best source of new business.

3. Your operational and finance colleagues will thank you. When customers get frustrated about outcomes that are not delivered, it costs time, effort, and money. Get a reputation for winning orders that are easy to implement and support.

Potential Challenges

• Most customers want to discuss what you’re selling. You must proactively lead your conversations with customers to examine outcomes.

• Most salespeople want to talk about what they’re selling. As we’ve already stated, talking about what we know is easier. Whenever you’re discussing features of what you’re selling, think about how to steer the discussion to the associated outcomes for this specific customer of this aspect of your products and services.

• Knowledge and skills: Leading a conversation about outcomes requires MUCH higher levels of knowledge and skills. How will you develop the substantially greater expertise and awareness needed to lead these conversations?

How to practice customer success selling this week

Changing selling conversations to focus on customer outcomes is NOT a minor adjustment in how you sell!

These are fundamentally different and better conversations. You’ll need to reset your skills and priorities every week. You’ll need your Weekly Sales Reset!

In every conversation with customers this week, remember to prioritise the outcomes your customers need, even if they want to talk about what you’re selling!

What does this mean in practice?

It will be best if you aim to finish every conversation with the ability to confirm their required outcomes in writing. These outcomes can become the pivotal centre of your sales proposals.

If you need to improve your customer success selling skills, consider joining our Sales Reset Together Community. You’ll gain access to lots of support and various ways to practice and improve in LIVE! training and coaching sessions.

Join us for your thirty-day free trial to learn if we can help you put your customer outcomes at the centre of every selling conversation.

End of Week - Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this Weekly Sales Reset valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Here’s a link to a page explaining how these weekly newsletters are designed to help you learn and practice your customer success selling skills.

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Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

If you have any questions or experience to share:

• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

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