BUSINESS OUTCOMES: USE IT AS A THOUGHT LEADER FOR 35% MORE OPPORTUNITIES
Edward Golod
I convert pipeline into revenue for SMB CEOs — $265M closed | Quarterbacking deals with enterprise sales execution | Open doors and engineer CXO decisions
No Pain No Gain
Executive Decision Makers in your target accounts have complex problems and all the associated financial pains. They want more from you than your Vendor “solution”.
Every year the CIO, CFO, and Board fund their strategic, big budget initiatives. Rarely do they have budget line items for your products or solutions. What they do have instead are corporate goals, initiatives, and the desired outcome.
Across the board, they lament that Account Executives or Salespeople too often are unprepared to have a business conversation or discussion about their (buyer’s) issues. And, of crucial importance, how the Vendor and their company can deliver value; in other words, quite simply, how they can help them.
Build high-performing opportunities
What they want are “results” – the outcome of something, of doing something.
Outcomes come from putting out efforts to improve a strategic and of course, a financial condition within the target accounts. The entire account organization follows the dictum of “delivering shareholder value’ which is measured in dollars and cents. It is carried by the board, CEO, down to VP’s, Directors, and even managers.
Budgets are made for your products or solutions because they fix a problem but up the chain, where they get approved, they also have to support the financial machinery of the company which functions because it delivers value to “their customers”.
Typical business outcomes
They come in standardized corporate desired states, beginning with the most important:
- increased revenue and profits
- lower costs
- abate corporate risk
- improve internal or customer-bases efficiencies
then extends into:
- greater customer acquisition
- retention, acquisition
- and greater upsell & cross-sell opportunities.
To the same end: these are 1) measurable and 2) quantifiable.
Business outcomes are WHAT your products or solutions deliver to your prospect and drive critical executive decision-maker conversations.
Show me the money
Target accounts need to buy products and services tied to business outcomes and, the critical end result is they regard their Vendors as “strategic” and not a commodity provider.
How do you “Show me the money”
His requires hyper-personalized content that is built on several “states.”
- Getting to the end state. Outcomes are built with realities. They are more than desired states, which are prone to be unachievable. Help your prospect see how you clearly deliver value to their business goals.
- Measure, and re-measure. Your promised results are financial but may be hard to achieve so help the prospect to observe them with you, guiding them and building critical trust.
- Align to fund top-level initiatives. Vendor outcomes need to be attached to funded initiatives, so be sure you connect financially to your prospect’s fiscal goals and corporate earnings.
- Seen using an executive lens. All initiatives and their desired results, which you’re selling your products and services into are viewed by different people. Sell into the executive whose job is at risk if the initiative fails.
- Value over time. Getting big deals is more than closing. It’s deployment, support, and service. Define your business outcome across the entire customer lifecycle.
Where Thought Leadership comes in?
To do this, you need to use a Thought Leadership process because you're delivering insights, many being provocative, not just value-based content!
You must translate your business outcomes into a form that your target executive will see as being aligned with their business goals. It is inadequate to use content marketing to do this! You must think like an executive and you have to think like a Thought Leader, to translate your products or service into consumable business points of view.
That is what Thought Leadership means
Business outcome-lead selling is the fastest way to grow pipelines and opportunities and typically can drive 35% more production with just about the same effort of standard consultative selling.
Thought Leadership takes us to the next level and makes sure you're aligning with senior executives, who control the purse strings and the ability to fund what you were trying to sell. In today's economics, this is not a nice to have, this is a must to have!
Take the time to understand your value, articulate it across all contacts in your sales cycles, and you’ll be prepared when it’s time to close with the decision-makers.
Are you confident all your salespeople are capable of pressing the right sales buttons at the right time? It would be great to hear about your own experiences.
#thoughtleadership#insights#sales#businessoutcomes#clientacquisition#SaasSales
Edward Golod
Founder & CEO
Influence, Authority & Trust Build New Customer Conversations as a Thought Leader | Breakthrough Noise Barriers to Engage in our Attention Economy | Linkedin Top 2% | Business Outcomes |