Stop Selling Services (and Sell This Instead)

"What the customer buys and considers value is never a product," writes Peter Drucker, "It is always utility, that is, what a product or service does for him." Which are you selling? Your services, expertise, and qualifications, or how these assets can be specifically leveraged in helping the client succeed?

If you say the latter, you are in rare company in the A/E/environmental business. I recently surveyed nearly a hundred corporate websites for one of my clients that is in the process of refreshing their brand. I wanted to determine the primary way firms in our business attempt to differentiate themselves, at least based on their website messaging.

It was admittedly a subjective exercise, but I think revealing nonetheless. I divided the firms' prevailing messaging into four categories: (1) what we do, (2) who we are, (3) how we help clients succeed, and (4) how we help make a better world. My conclusions are summarized below (the ranges reflect the subjective nature of my assessment):

The results are no surprise. I've been observing this for decades. Technical professionals tend to think their skill in what they do is what sells. This is the focus of their marketing, sales pitches, and proposals. It's how they describe their work and their firms. It's what they promote in recruiting new hires.

But it's not what really sells. People don't buy products and services; they buy what those things do for them. They buy how those products and services can help them achieve their goals or solve their problems. There is abundant evidence of this in the business literature relative to B2B transactions (not to mention my experience as a business development professional for many years).

"Selling solutions [arguably our most important 'product'] isn't enough," reported MIT Sloan Management Review, "B2B companies need to focus on helping each customer achieve better outcomes." They were reporting on a study conducted by the Thunderbird School of Global Management at Arizona State University. There are countless articles echoing this same theme of focusing on customer outcomes rather than solutions or services.

Further evidence comes from a recent study by The RAIN Group that surveyed both B2B buyers and sellers to determine what aspects of these transactions each group found most challenging. Some significant perception gaps emerged. For example: While only 19% of sellers admitted they struggled to "make the ROI case"(meaning that 81% felt they were competent at it), buyers indicated that sellers succeeded in doing this only 16% of the time.

The chart below highlights the key factors that B2B buyers said most influenced their buying decisions, according to the RAIN Group study, compared with their assessment of what proportion of sellers were effective relative to each factor:

Notice what's missing? Any mention of breadth of services, quality, expertise, or other technical qualifications that our industry is prone to feature in selling to prospective clients. It's not that these aren't important—they are—but they're table stakes, not differentiators. So don't sell services or solutions like everyone else; sell outcomes.

Why Clients Aren't Asking for This

Despite the evidence offered above for focusing on outcomes over services or solutions, most technical professionals won't be convinced. They have good reason to be skeptical. Clients aren't asking them to provide outcomes. Client RFPs and work orders specify scopes of work, technical solutions, and relevant qualifications. Desired business outcomes, if mentioned at all, are simply context for the requested services.

Why? Are our clients that different from other B2B buyers? I seriously doubt it. Let me suggest a few primary reasons why our clients aren't likely to take the initiative in talking with us about helping them achieve their business outcomes:

• Since we usually don't talk about outcomes, clients understandably don't associate us with them. We provide technical solutions, not business solutions. At least, that's how we describe our work. The fact is that our services enable client outcomes. But we don't typically make the connection, and thus clients don't either. It doesn't help that the completion of our work is normally separated from the client's ROI by months or even years (see the Project Value Chain below).
• The adherence of both parties to Qualifications-Based Selection protocols shifts the sales/buying focus to our qualifications and scope of services. QBS was intended to fight the commoditization of our services by preventing clients from procuring them on a low-price basis. But pushing everyone to attempt to differentiate themselves on the basis of qualifications, rather than the factors that actually matter most to clients (see chart above), may in fact be producing the opposite effect.
• The way we describe our work usually omits how it enables client or societal outcomes. I've read thousands of our proposals and project descriptions and have participated in hundreds of sales calls, and can attest that we rarely have much to say about results (especially on the engineering and scientific side of the business). I blame much of this on QBS. Our collective analytical mindset and task orientation is undoubtedly a factor. So likely is the space between our services and the client's return on investment.

The Project Value Chain

The delay between the completion of our scope of work and the client's ROI is surely a factor in our failing to talk or write much about outcomes. And it is precisely the reason we need to be talking about them. I find the following depiction of the Project Value Chain helpful in clarifying this point:

The concept of the value chain was created by Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter in the 1980s to illustrate the sequence of systems and processes that enable a company to create value for customers. Each step of the value chain represents an incremental addition of value en route to the customer's ultimate realization of value (or as described here, the client's ROI).

I previously noted the first takeaway from the Project Value Chain for our business, the fact that our scope of design or consulting services is typically separated from the client's ROI. There are still more steps needed—usually performed by others—before our work produces the outcomes sought through the client's "larger project," of which our SOW is only a part.

Indeed, at the time when our work is typically completed, the client incurs a net cost for our services. The value of our work is realized later after others' contributions. This "value gap" perhaps helps explain why our compensation trails most other professional services sectors. We're farther removed from the client's payoff.

So how can we narrow this gap? By connecting our work to the client's ROI. Not only by defining how our work positions the client to achieve the desired outcomes. But also by describing in specific terms how we will plan, organize, and perform the work to enable those outcomes. That's how you sell what the client really needs.

How to Sell Client Outcomes

I'm excited to see that outcomes-based project delivery is starting to take root in our business. But we still have a long way to go, which means the opportunities are abundant to differentiate your firm as the one especially focused on helping the client achieve business success, not just perform a technical scope of work. Here are a few suggestions on how to do this:

Don't settle for default contributions to client outcomes; be specific in how you will tailor the work to deliver results. The first obstacle you'll face in selling outcomes is a host of colleagues who believe they're already doing it. Yes, our work is helping clients achieve business success in substantial ways. But we both claim and receive far too little credit for that. To distinguish your firm, you need to make the connection between your work and client outcomes more tangible and intentional.

Invest the time to truly understand your client's business. To be able to sell more direct contributions to helping clients succeed, you need to understand what that success looks like. With access to the internet, researching clients and markets has never been easier. But I still regularly encounter situations where sellers or key account teams lack the basic knowledge of their client's business necessary to develop an effective value proposition. And, of course, you should be asking the client about their business and the terms of success.

Clarify the client's desired outcomes that are driving the need for the project you're pursuing. A good place to start is to be able to answer these questions: "Why is the client doing this project? And what does success look like?" I've been asking these questions for 30 years as a consultant, business development professional, and corporate proposal manager, and usually I've been disappointed with the answers. Clarity in understanding client outcomes strongly positions your firm for sales success.

Make your value proposition the centerpiece of your sales and proposal strategy. Trying to win sales opportunities based primarily on your firm's qualifications is typically a fool's errand. Don't be misled. Lead with your value proposition, and use qualifications mostly to prove you're capable of delivering what you've proposed. The formulation that I've been using for defining a value proposition is: Solution (How we solve the problem) + Outcomes (What the results are for the client) + Benefits (How those results deliver client success).

Define an outcomes-based project management approach to deliver what you've promised. Our project teams tend to make the same mistake that project teams across other industries make—we focus on project outputs rather than project outcomes. Outputs are our work products or deliverables. Even with client outcomes clearly defined, it's easy to shift focus back to project outputs because that's the way our typical project processes are oriented. Project outputs are not an end, but a means to the end—the realization of client outcomes.

The disconnect between selling outcomes and actually delivering them doesn't just manifest itself after contract award; it's often evident in how we scope the work during the sales and proposal process. Don't just sell the concept of client outcomes; commit to figuring out how to structure your projects to deliver them. I've found the following framework—what I call the Golden Path—a good place to start.

Tell the story of the client's success. The power of story is widely underestimated in our industry. We too often settle for a scope of work in our sales conversations and proposals when a project story would be far more effective. Stories ideally link tasks and milestones in a cohesive narrative. They bring the human element into the project account, as people are the principal actors (and beneficiaries) in the story. And story is a great way to connect your work to the client's outcomes.

Keep in mind that outcomes are not always tangible work products, solutions, milestones, or performance metrics. They are also realized in how people feel. Success is both outward and inward. Problems solved provide both repairs and relief. Change can be observed in both physical modifications and metaphysical responses.

The stories you weave into your sales conversations, proposals, and interviews can transform dry descriptions of results into transformative outcomes that are both engineered and experienced.

So sell outcomes, not services or solutions, and separate your firm from the crowd. You'll be providing your clients with greater value, which of course, eventually comes back your way.