Planning for your customer's success with your products and services

Hello Sales Reset Community

This week, our focus is on planning for success. We’re keen to help you achieve the success you need!

Here’s a big question …

Let’s start with a big question. What do you hope to achieve when you speak with a potential customer?

To ask the same question differently, what's the most important outcome of your conversations with prospects and customers?

This is a REALLY big question!

When you meet with customers, your priorities and goals will greatly impact how you lead your meetings.

And the obvious answer is …

For most salespeople, the answer to the question is obvious. Success means winning the customer’s business and getting the purchase order!

Getting purchase orders means achieving sales targets and earning commissions. These salespeople prioritise winning the business. For them, that’s what success looks like.

However …

At Sales Reset, we see things differently.

We absolutely want you to achieve your sales target and earn your commissions. However, we believe the best way to achieve sales targets is to prioritise your customers' success with your products and services.

This is a fundamentally different priority from what is taught in conventional sales training. This change will lead to you having very different conversations with your customers.

And you’ll get better sales results! 😀

How you'll improve sales results this week

• “Overcoming Objections” vs “Planning for Success”

• How to plan for your customer’s success

• Potential Challenges

• Planning for your customers’ success this week

• End of Week - Reflective Practice

“Overcoming Objections” vs “Planning for Success”

Let’s look at a key example of changing priorities and planning for sales success differently.

All salespeople have heard about “overcoming objections.” Conventional sales training teaches that overcoming objections is a standard part of selling.

At Sales Reset, we believe that talking about “overcoming objections” indicates the wrong priorities. Thinking about how to “overcome objections” reveals that salespeople's top priorities are winning the business and getting the purchase order.

Instead, we passionately believe that your conversations with customers should focus on helping them achieve their desired outcomes using your products and services.

Instead of “overcoming objections”, you’ll coach them about the success they need. You’ll co-create plans for their success with your products and services.

How can you lead a conversation with a customer about the success they’ll achieve with your products and services?

How to plan for your customer’s success

The more people learn about planning for success, the more they realise that planning for success is HARD!

In each of the steps below, you’ll need to coach your customers to clarify the success they’re seeking. (For more information about coaching customers, have a look at our previous Weekly Sales Reset newsletters.)

Here’s how you can help your customer plan for success with your products and services:

1. Define Success: Help your customers define what they want to achieve as specifically as possible. Help them to clarify the success they’re hoping to achieve.

2. Current Reality: Now your customer has a better understanding of the success they’re seeking, it’s time to compare what they hope to achieve with their current reality.

3. Options: Review together how the customer might shift from their current reality to achieve their objectives. This is when you can begin making the case for your products and services.

4. Reporting: Agree on how progress from current reality towards their objectives will be reported.

5. Plan: Create the roadmap to achieve these desired outcomes and incorporate this roadmap into your proposals.

6. Next Actions: Agree on who needs to do what and when to maintain momentum with all these ideas.

Potential Challenges

• “Just tell me what I need to know”: Customers might approach conversations with you simply as a way to answer their questions and learn about what you’re selling. You’ll need to earn their respect and trust to move the conversation toward planning for success.
  

• Every customer is unique: Every customer you work with will have their own unique circumstances and priorities. They’ll likely have their own way of talking about their priorities, using words that have particular meaning for them. You’ll need the flexibility and agility to adapt and not fall back on “what you always say”!
  

• “We don’t know what success looks like”: Your customers might not have fully considered the success they seek. This is a terrific opportunity for you to bring true value to them, even before they’ve bought anything! You can help them plan for success.

Planning for your customers’ success this week

Here’s how to practice planning for your customers’ success this week:

• Before every meeting: Before every meeting with customers this week, think about what success with your products and services might look like for this specific customer.
  

• During your meetings: Even though customers want to ask lots of questions about what you’re selling, try hard to spend sufficient time talking about the outcomes they’re seeking.
  

• After your meetings: Develop your written proposals so they are seen as a plan for success with your products and services. Instead of your proposals being primarily about what you’re selling, focus on the measurable success this customer can expect from their investment.

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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