Everybody expects your sales team to talk about what they’re selling!

Hello Sales Reset Leader

In this week’s companion Weekly Sales Reset newsletter for front-line salespeople, we explain why they should prioritise the outcomes their customers need from your products and services.

This is probably one of the biggest challenges your team members face.

Everybody expects salespeople to talk about what they’re selling!

It’s what customers expect and what most salespeople believe is their role. What else should they be talking about?! 😀

However, you know that customers should be focused on buying outcomes. Your customers should see your products and services as a way to purchase these outcomes.

Many customers believe they know enough about their situation and what they’re trying to achieve. If they’re prepared to talk to salespeople, it may simply be to clarify specific aspects of your products and services’ specifications and capabilities.

These conversations will enable your team members to co-create compelling proposals to set your offerings apart from your competitors.

The rest of this email newsletter assumes you have read this week’s Weekly Sales Reset:

• Title: Change your sales priorities to improve your sales results

• Subtitle: How to prioritise delivering customer outcomes to achieve your sales targets

How to improve your team's results this week

• Evidence of outcome-focused conversations

  • Sales Proposals

  • Call recordings and accompanied meetings

  • Emails and personalised videos

• Recommended coaching session agenda

• Expected pushback about prioritising outcomes

• Role-play recommendations

• Leadership Reflective Practice

• Would you welcome some help?

Evidence of outcome-focused conversations

Let’s look at where you can find evidence of your team members seizing the initiative and proactively leading conversations to discuss outcomes.

Sales Proposals

• The best place to look for evidence of outcome-focused selling conversations is in the proposals prepared by your team members.

• The most straightforward test is whether your team members’ proposals prioritise customer outcomes. The answer should be simple: yes or no.

• When you look at the part of their proposals that detail the outcomes required by customers, are these outcomes:

  • Bespoke and specific to this particular customer, or generic and copied from other proposals?

  • Defined in ways that will enable effective reporting based on clearly identified and measurable performance criteria?

  • Prioritised based on the needs of all the significant stakeholders engaged in the co-creation process?

• How much of their proposals are about what they’re selling instead of prioritising customer outcomes?

• Some of the answers to questions in this section might indicate that your company’s current proposal templates need to be reviewed and changed.

Call recordings and accompanied meetings

• As you spend time with team members in their meetings or review call recordings, what portion of the meeting time is spent talking about what your team member is selling, compared to time spent clarifying the customer's desired outcomes?

• When customers ask questions, how effectively do your team members clarify the relevance to outcomes?

• How effectively does your team member conclude every meeting with a summary of the agreed-upon required outcomes?

Emails and personalised videos

• Like with proposals, how much of the content of emails and personalised videos is about what your team member is selling? How much is about the outcomes the customer needs?

Recommended coaching session agenda

Before leading your coaching sessions on Customer Success Selling, ask your team members to review the current edition of Weekly Sales Reset.

Give yourself time to reflect on WIIFM, “What’s in for me,” and empathise with your team members about how they might be sufficiently motivated to prioritise customer outcomes in all their selling conversations.

Here’s this week’s recommended coaching session agenda:

1. Start with a brief review of their experience and results from their previous coaching session.

2. Ask this team member for their observations about prioritising customer outcomes instead of talking about what they’re selling.

3. Together, review the evidence you found in your preparation with each team member.

4. Identify and prioritise a small range of specific practical things that this team member can do differently and better to increase their focus on outcomes.

5. Spend some time role-playing (working with these guidelines).

6. Finish the coaching session with agreed and specific action conclusions.

Expected pushback about prioritising outcomes

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members on prioritising outcomes in all of your team members’ selling conversations.

1. I don’t have the required knowledge and skills: Your team member might correctly identify their lack of commercial and strategic business insights or facilitation skills to lead these conversations.

2. My customers don’t want to talk about outcomes: This is a common issue, especially when working with contacts in relatively more junior stakeholder roles.

3. There’s no time: Getting time in customer’s calendars is becoming increasingly challenging. If customers believe they understand their needs sufficiently, they might only be prepared to give your team member the time to clarify specific product and service specification issues. Your team member must learn how to wrestle for the opportunity to deepen the conversation by considering outcomes.

What are your best responses now you know these potential pushback areas?

Role-play recommendations

1. Biggest current opportunity: Choose your team member’s biggest current opportunity and the most significant stakeholder in this situation. Role-play a discussion about outcomes.

2. Most significant meeting in their calendar: Find the most important meeting in your team member’s calendar. Role-play the discussion about outcomes.

3. Recent major loss: Identify the most significant lost opportunity from recent weeks. Role-play the discussion that might have taken place about outcomes.

(You may find these recommendations about using role-play helpful.)

Leadership Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

Would you welcome some help?

If you’d like help developing your team, you might want to join our Sales Reset Together Community of Practice with some or all of your team members.

Every week, we run LIVE! training and coaching events online to help our members improve their sales results. One session each week examines the specific theme of the current Weekly Sales Reset newsletters.

For sales team leaders with at least one active team member in our community, we invite you to join a Sales Reset Leaders Mastermind Group. This is an opportunity to share real-world experience and find support from other sales leaders.

If you need more help, we can meet to clarify how our Sales Team Leader’s Coaching Programmes might accelerate your team’s sales results.

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

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Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

If you have any questions or experience to share:

• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

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