How to sell better by co-creating with your customer to deliver better outcomes

Hello Sales Reset Community

We all know that salespeople need to be excellent communicators.

But what if excellent communication skills are no longer sufficient?

Our topic in this Weekly Sales Reset is the HUGE difference between communicating value and co-creating value.

Here’s the summary: Stop trying to COMMUNICATE the value of what you’re selling. Instead, focus more on CO-CREATING proposals to deliver better customer outcomes.

In practice, using your product knowledge to ask great questions is best!

How you'll improve sales results this week

• What is co-creation?

• What should we co-create?

• How do salespeople co-create with customers?

• Potential Challenges

• Join Our FREE Sales Reset Together Community

• End of Week - Reflective Practice

What is co-creation?

Co-creation is a collaborative approach involving multiple stakeholders working together to generate ideas and develop better ways to create more value.

Salespeople have limited time in conversations with customers. We should spend less of this limited time talking about what we’re selling. Without care, we can spend all this precious time answering customers’ questions about our products and services.

Instead, we should spend as much time as possible co-creating proposals that will enable our customers to achieve the outcomes they need with our products and services.

What should we co-create?

Here are some key things you can co-create with your customers:

1. Better Awareness: It’s safe to assume your customer has not thought through all of the implications of a potential purchase. You certainly don't FULLY understand their needs! Take responsibility for enabling everybody to understand all aspects of what is being discussed better.

2. Better Outcomes: Now that everybody is more aware, you can lead the collaboration with stakeholders to co-create better definitions of this customer's specific needs. Make sure these outcomes are summarised effectively in easily understood words.

3. Outcome Reporting Metrics: Now that you know the required outcomes, you can seek to co-create the metrics that will enable the reporting of evidence of progress.

4. Commercial Proposals: With all these steps in place, you’ve got everything you need to co-create proposals that explain how your products and services will achieve these reported outcomes!

How do salespeople co-create with customers?

Here are some of the best ways to co-create with your customers:

1. Coach: Ask great questions to COACH your customers.

2. Stakeholders: Extend the range of people involved to increase the range of perspectives and priorities. These can include stakeholders from your customers and stakeholders from your company.

3. Proposal Process: Instead of trying to perfect your proposal on the first attempt, create “first-draft proposals” and agree on a time to review and improve collaboratively with your customer.

4. Project Plan: Develop a clear plan in your thoughts and notes about how to move from where things stand currently to delivering your customer’s reported outcomes. Ideally, spell out this plan to all other stakeholders as part of your proposals.

Potential Challenges

The customer won’t engage in co-creation: For various reasons, your customers might not immediately engage in the co-creation we’ve described this week. The answer to this challenge is for you to become more skilled in co-creation!

Insufficient time: Co-creating greater awareness, better outcomes and compelling proposals takes time. You could conclude that an opportunity is too small to deserve this approach. Or you could seek to become more skilled to co-create in even the smallest opportunity!

Join Our FREE Sales Reset Together Community

If you like our approach to selling and want to learn more, join our free Sales Reset Together community. 

It’s mid-September 2024, and we’ve been developing and testing all the major parts of our community with our Founder Members in recent months. We’ve just opened the doors! 

Here’s what you’ll get as a member: 

• Community: You'll get immediate access to our private online community. 

• Practice: Join our LIVE! Practice sessions to practice coaching customers and co-creating proposals.

• Online Training: Access to online lessons, including our Customer Success 3CSelling Quick Start course. 

• LIVE! Events: Join us in our LIVE! Events online and access recordings. 

• Proposal Reviews: You can request confidential proposal reviews with video feedback and recommendations for improvement. 

• Learning & Earning Plan: We'll help and support you in developing your learning and earning plan using your Sales Reset Mastery self-assessment results. 

• Support: You can ask questions and get support in our discussion forums. 

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

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Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

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• 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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