Recording & Takeaways – Introducing Outcomes-Based Selling & Success
Paul Henderson, author of The Outcome Generation; and Dave Duke, co-founder and CCO of MetaCX came together to discuss outcomes-based selling and success.
Revenue organizations have traditionally focused on how they target and sell, not on how they serve the end goal of a buyer. One of the ways to differentiate and build lasting customer relationships is through outcomes-based selling and success. By focusing on how your product fulfills the needs of your target audience, you’ll earn trust, build mutual accountability, and move deals forward.
For those who missed the webinar, check out five key takeaways as well as the full recording below!
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Buyers don’t want quarter-inch drills.
This may seem like a strange takeaway, but it’s not if you’re familiar with the late Theodore Levitt of Harvard Business School. The professor so wisely said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
Your customers don’t buy your offering for its features or the packaging it comes in. They buy your product because they are looking to achieve specific goals and objectives. They buy your product for outcomes.
There are two types of outcomes–success outcomes and contributing outcomes.
A success outcome is an ongoing business result the top management of your customer would consider a success. In contrast to objectives related to user activity or adoption, a success outcome looks at the bigger picture. It is the end result that a customer is hoping to achieve through your products and services.
Contributing outcomes are the smaller outcomes that are collectively required for the success outcome to be achieved. For each success outcome, there are typically five to eight contributing outcomes.
Vendors must closely collaborate with their customers to achieve outcomes.
When a customer feels that a supplier does not understand their needs, the supplier has failed in their primary responsibility. This can create compounding issues over time for the supplier; with the ultimate result being customer and revenue churn.
The only way to prove your value is by working directly with your customers to achieve their desired outcomes. It takes two to create a longstanding, stable and productive partnership. While the supplier is responsible for setting the tone of the relationship, the customer plays a critical role and must communicate their expectations to the supplier.
An outcomes-based approach applies to the entire customer lifecycle.
An outcomes-based approach is not limited to the customer success team. It should be integral to the way you manage the entire customer lifecycle. Here are a few ways you can incorporate outcomes throughout the customer journey:
- Sales: Close more deals by positioning the outcomes your buyers value.
- Onboarding: Once you’ve earned a buyer’s business, keep outcomes at the forefront of the customer relationship to benefit from smoother sales handoffs and accelerated value realization.
- Customer Success: Establish ownership around key action items and work together to complete the steps necessary to ensure outcome achievement.
- Renewals: Gain protection against customer turnover by exposing a system of record for outcome achievement. Create growth opportunities by demonstrating where value was delivered.
By centering your entire business around your customers’ desired outcomes, you can start to establish, measure, and prove the value you’re delivering.
MetaCX enables outcomes-based selling and success.
MetaCX is pioneering a new outcomes-based approach for managing the entire customer lifecycle by transforming how suppliers and buyers collaborate and win together. By creating shared spaces that allow suppliers and buyers to define and measure outcomes together, MetaCX helps align sales, success and delivery teams around real business impact that customers can see.
To facilitate an outcomes-based approach, MetaCX supports three main use-cases:
- Collaborative Deal Management: Close more deals by collaborating with prospects to create success plans with outcomes they can see – all within a co-branded space.
- Coordinated Handoffs: Streamline the handoff of outcomes from sales to implementation and success teams to ensure internal alignment and accelerate time to value for new customers.
- Proof of Performance: Instrument data sources and define milestones and metrics to make desired outcomes come to life as a real-time performance dashboard for your company and your customers.
Ready to learn more? Check out the webinar recording below!