This is a blog takeover by Steven Goas, sales enablement leader at Capital One.
In the digital, customer-centric economy of 2021 and beyond, executives are not moved to action by your selling organization’s solution features, details or even benefits.
Your buyers, especially the C-suite executives (who have become even more invested in sales cycles), care about their long-term outcomes. What’s in it for their organization? What can your solution help them achieve? How will this be an investment, not a cost?
It is long past due time to modernize your value messaging strategy and focus on the customer first and foremost. You do this, and you support both content and pipeline enablement. How?
Below, I detail the proven outcome-selling framework.
Embrace A Foundation of Long-Term Value Messaging
Outcomes-based messaging typically inserts itself later into the sales process. Maybe your buyer just is not convinced. Potential outcomes then come into the discussion as a last-resort point to save the sale.
But with an outcomes-focused value messaging strategy, the potential gains a buyer can expect from your solution comes into the mix sooner and with greater impact. When you normally would be touting your features and benefits, you should also be leaning heavily into what your prospect can expect to gain over the long-term. There is profound impact in jumping past the immediate value you get from a product’s features and benefits to the long-term gains the wallet owners care about.
With this focus, both your salespeople and your buyers will be better served because:
- Buyer outcomes are prioritized over selling a product — and Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™ always wins in the long run.
- Sellers gain a deeper understanding of their target buyers’ needs and goals, and thus engage in more relevant and more valuable conversations — building long-term relationships that serve both parties.
- Relevant customer scenarios are shared more effectively and become a major tool to your sellers.
- Sales tools like value calculators are built more effectively, to provide a real picture of outcomes that a buyer most cares about.
Overall, outcome-focused selling encourages sales enablement and sales professional teams to develop highly personalized experiences based on where the buyer is in their journey and what could add value to them then and there.
Reap the Outcomes of Better Value Messaging
In terms of what we can realistically expect from being better with outcome messaging, it is more about the leading indicators. The right messaging with the right customer at the right time should help drive lagging indicators like win rates, gross revenue, deal size, etc. — but it will not help directly drive any of these.
Leading with an outcomes-based approach, you can expect to support pipeline enablement — driving conversions, deal-stage-velocity and shoring up the overall client experience.
Are you ready to see the results? Prove it. Not to us — to your buyers.
For more guidance on breaking out of harmful selling status quos, download the Mereo Seek to Serve, Not to Sell™ eBook.