Your sales process should use outcome-based selling to help customers understand how the products and services your company sells will move their business forward.
How does your sales team convey value to a prospective customer?
If they still review and highlight product benefits or emphasize your company’s storied history and expertise in technology, then they’re doing it wrong (sorry!).
Instead of talking about products, solutions, and benefits, your sales team should be focused on creating business outcomes for clients—and that’s what outcome-based selling is all about.
This sales strategy helps your sales team take a customer-centric approach to meeting clients’ needs and achieving their desired business outcomes and objectives.
Instead of pushing products or asking clients what they need, your sales team can use an outcome-based selling strategy to help customers understand how you can help them achieve a specific business goal, such as:
Increase cash flow coverage ratio (CFCR) above 1.2
Increase market share by 5%
Eliminate downtime by 50%
Increase margins by 10%
Increase win percentage by 7%
In addition, because selling managed services is a financial strategy for your customers, shifting toward outcome-based selling is also a critical step in selling managed services successfully.
Here are just a few ways that outcome-based selling improves managed services sales.
1. It puts the customer first.
By talking to a prospective customer about things they’re interested in, the salesperson uncovers the client’s unique needs, goals, priorities, and even personal wins. It all starts with asking the right questions at the right time.
To help with this, Revenueify created a simple, customer-focused interviewing process called “FIND,” which helps sales professionals ask the right questions in four critical areas.
From there, the salesperson uses their industry knowledge and applies it to basic business knowledge to share insights and show the client what they need to do to meet their goals, compete in their market, and improve their business. In other words: How will the solution impact their business?
A customer may think they need something they don’t—or be confused about how to reach a specific KPI. A salesperson focused on outcome-based selling can step up as the client’s advisor and show them exactly what they need to do to move forward.
2. It keeps the audience in mind.
While prospects falling within certain buyer personas or job titles often have comparable goals and challenges, each person has their own take on what their company needs to accomplish—and what stands in the way of making those accomplishments possible.
With outcome-based selling, sales conversations change based on who you’re talking to: IT, operations, marketing, human resources, or finance, for example. While the VP of manufacturing may be focused on maintaining capital equipment costs, that same company’s HR director wants to find ways to attract and retain quality workers.
3. It shifts conversations away from cost and focuses on ROI and business objectives.
Because your customers’ goals—not a specific product or solution—are always at the forefront, the sales conversation shifts away from costs and toward value and ROI. This makes it much more natural to weave in conversations about managed services and explain how it can help the client drive ROI and value. Revenueify created a simple ROI tool for technology sales that can easily be made a part of your sales process to help communicate value to clients.
4. It builds trust and credibility.
Relationship-building begins from the very first conversation. When a salesperson demonstrates their industry expertise, provides valuable insights, and proves that they understand what the customer’s business objectives they are wanting to accomplish, then trust and credibility are built right away.
As the project progresses, this relationship only gets stronger. As a result, your customers may also be more likely to recommend your company to others and reach out to you for future projects.
5. It creates relationships.
With outcome-based selling, a sale doesn’t signal the end. The relationship isn’t over after an AV or security system is sold. Instead, the relationship is just getting started.
Your company becomes the trusted advisor that clients can turn to every time they have questions, need more training, want to make system improvements or even complete another project.
Create Repeatable Sales Processes and Support Managed Services
Revenueify’s Managed Service Enablement consulting services help you scale your managed services practice by creating repeatable processes that your sales team can follow for every interaction—including outcome-based sales conversations.
Learn more about how we can help you create tailored best practices for engaging with potential customers, identifying opportunities, and closing deals.
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