Turn your sales reps into superstars with training that gives them hands-on experience in outcome-based selling. This strategy is your ticket to winning more deals and standing out in a sea of sameness.
The United States may not be facing a full-on recession, but stiff economic headwinds are on the horizon.
What’s your company’s plan? Will you hunker down and weather the storm as best you can—or are you looking for a way to turn these headwinds into tailwinds that increase growth and positively affect profits and revenue?
Instead of letting the industry’s many sources of vulnerability slow your company down (pandemic, supply chain issues, talent shortages, and the list goes on), you can create lasting stability and value during economic uncertainty.
Deloitte recently studied this very idea. To pinpoint how enterprises thrive during challenging times, the research company analyzed the performance of 500 large-cap public companies between 2016 and 2022. The results reveal that long-term success comes down to two things:
- Your company’s ability to win
- Your company’s capacity for change
Post-pandemic, the business environment changed for nearly everyone. What worked for your salespeople before won’t work anymore. In other words: There’s never been a better time to embolden your sales team with new strategies.
Your customers don’t need support from yet another company that claims to be able to help them sell, design, and install technology. Instead, they need guidance, advice, and a strategic technology roadmap that will steer them toward meeting their targets and KPIs.
And you don’t need a whole new team or more people to offer this level of support to your customers. In fact, if they receive the right education and training, the salespeople you have right now can take on the role of coach, consultant, mentor, problem-solver, and advisor. This sales approach is called outcome-based selling. To make it happen, your team just needs a little help getting started.
Are You Selling What Matters?
How have your salespeople been trained to convey value to a prospective customer?
Are they reviewing and highlighting product benefits or emphasizing your company’s history and expertise in technology? More than likely, they are—and you’ve probably noticed that those strategies aren’t getting them very far.
Instead of talking about products, solutions, and benefits, your sales team should be focused on creating business outcomes for clients. That’s what outcome-based selling is all about. It allows you to focus on buyers as people so you can understand their pain points, their problems, and the effects of these problems on them, their company, and their own clients.
Most integrators haven’t transitioned to an outcome-based selling model yet. Many are still relying on the traditional sales strategies they’ve used for years, which are focused on technology and price. Others in the bid market are simply waiting for customers to call them, which is reactive.
In an increasingly commoditized environment, making the change to lead with a proactive, outcome-based selling approach is one way to set your company apart amid economic uncertainty.
Outcome-based selling prepares and empowers your sales team to:
- Eliminate customer objections before they get in the way
- Identify the right kinds of customers—and how to talk to them
- Lead discussions focused on outcomes and ROI, not price
- Lose deals you won’t win anyway early
- Create technology roadmaps for customers
- Be proactive about creating opportunities and helping customers overcome challenges
If you want to stand out and win more deals, then making this change to your sales strategy is the way to do it.
Remember: Companies that successfully navigate uncertainty are able to win, and they’re able to implement change.
NSCA Member Advisory Councilmember Revenueify is leading outcome-based sales training to help integrators integrate this new way of selling into their processes using the salespeople they already have. The next program kicks off in early 2024. To sign up at the special NSCA rate, contact NSCA Director of Business Resources Mike Abernathy.
Learn more about REVUP Achiever training.
Tyler Ebnet is founder and principal consultant at Revenueify.
