169. Beyond the Solution: Why Sales Training Doesn't Translate Into Revenue

Speaker A: What if your sales training is working exactly as designed but your sales results aren't really improving yet? That's a pretty uncomfortable thought when you consider how much companies invest in developing their salespeople. Now we teach them how to ask better question, how, uh, to uncover needs, how to communicate value and follow a proven sales methodology. They practice it during the workshop, they get some feedback. It's a great trainer there. And we leave with a clear understanding of how we are supposed to do things and how we're supposed to sell. But then look at what's happening in the pipeline. And here is the issue. You've got a strategic account your company has been pursuing for months and the customer still hasn't committed. There's a seven figure opportunity in the forecast, but, uh, the buying group can't agree on the investment. And another customer has seen three demonstrations like the product but still hasn't taken any action. Now your salespeople have been trained to handle these situations. So why, why, why, why are uh, the deals still getting stuck? That's the question I want to explore. Today we'll look at why customers can be interested in your solution without having a compelling reason to buy. What research tells us about the disagreements happening inside a B2B buying group and how sellers can help customers make decisions than simply evaluate products. We'll also examine why sales methodologies often break down when people return from a training course to their actual real life situation. And I'll share the findings from a recent Fortune 500 pilot involving 15 sellers where documented outcome based selling action were associated with approximately $1.3 million in close revenue. And by the end of this episode, you will have a practical way to examine these strategic accounts, high value opportunities and stall deals in your own pipeline. And identify where your teams need more effective coaching. Because here is a question I think every sales leader should be asking. Are your sellers getting better at selling or are, uh, they simply getting better at attending sales training courses? Most companies invest heavily in product training. They want their sellers to understand the technology, the features, the competitive advantage and the problems their products are, uh, designed to solve. Of course that makes a lot of sense. A salesperson who can't explain their own offering is going to struggle to earn a customer's confidence. But product knowledge can also shape the direction of the sales conversation in a way we don't always recognize. Now a, uh, customer mentions a problem and the seller immediately sees how their solution could address that problem. They begin to explain the relevant capabilities, demonstrating features and describing how other, uh, customers use this wonderful product. The customer may find all of that super interesting, but interest doesn't necessarily lead to purchasing decisions. As we all know, the customer still needs to understand why solving the problem deserves attention now, what the investment will achieve and whether the people responsible for approving it will agree. And customers are increasingly well informed before these conversations even begin. According to Gardner, 73% of B2B buyers actively avoid suppliers who send irrelevant outreach. Research from LinkedIn Sales Navigator found that 86% of buyers identified sellers expertise as the leading driver of trust. Yet only 45% described the sellers they encountered as, guess what? Trustworthy. There's an interesting gap in those findings. Buyers place enormous value on expertise, but many aren't experiencing the level of expertise they expect from salespeople they meet. That should make us think very carefully about what expertise means in a customer conversation. Knowing your product is one part of it. Understanding the customer's business, recognizing their risks that they may have overlooked, and helping them evaluate the consequences of a decision are, uh, equally important. What is the difference now between a customer request and a business outcome? That's a big question. A customer tells a salesperson we need a CRM. For example, the salesperson could spend the next meeting discussing or functionality integrations, requirements, reporting capabilities and pricing. Now those questions will eventually be relevant if the customer decides to purchase a system. But the salesperson first needs to understand what's driving that request. Suppose the customer explains that their revenue forecasts are, ah, unreliable. For example, the sales managers don't recognize potential shortfalls early enough. And senior level leadership has difficulty making decisions because the numbers keep changing. Now there is something much more interesting to explore. How accurate are the forecasts? For example, when do managers discover that an opportunity is unlikely to close? What decisions are affected when projected revenue changes late in the quarter. And what would improve if managers could identify at risk deals earlier? Now, the customer originally asked for a CRM system, but the outcome they're trying to achieve involves more reliable forecasting and earlier visibility into revenue risk. That distinction could change the entire deal. The customer might need better technology. They might also need clearer, uh, opportunity qualification, more consistent pipeline reviews or stronger sales management practices. The salesperson can't determine that from the original request alone. And here is why I think a lot of sales conversations go wrong. We hear what the customer wants to buy and we start helping them to buy it. We premature problem solve. We qualify the opportunity, demonstrate the solution and work towards a proposal. But we may never have established whether buying that solution will actually produce the result the customer needs. That's the problem outcome based selling is designed to address. It starts by changing the focus of the conversation. Instead of working backwards from the product you're trying to sell, you work forward from the business result the customer is trying to achieve. And that's a major difference. You help the customer establish what needs to improve, why it matters, and how they will measure success and what could prevent them from getting there. Only then can you properly evaluate which solution or combination of changes make actually sense for that particular customer. And that changes the role of the salesperson. They're helping the customer make a decision about how to improve their business, for example, rather than simply helping them choose between competing products. Take that CRM example. If the salesperson can establish that inaccurate forecasts are, um, causing the company to make poor investment decisions, the conversation now has a financial consequence that the management team actually can evaluate. The customer can begin weighing the cost of the problem against the cost and effort of addressing it. And there is another question that deserves attention. What happens if the customer does nothing? In this case, if inaccurate forecasting is creating serious issues and problems for investment planning, for example, or resource allocation, the customer may have a strong, very strong reason as a matter of fact to act. If the inconvenience is relatively minor, the urgency may be much lower. The salesperson therefore needs to understand the actual consequences rather than assume the customer should buy because the solution is attractive. That understanding becomes especially important when more people enter the decision making process. The next question we're going to explore is why interested customers still don't buy. I'm sure you have experienced that, uh, motion as well. One of the most frustrating situations in B2B sales is having a strong relationship with your main contact and still being unable to get that decision. Your contact understands the solution, believes it could help them, and may even be advocating it for it internally. And that's wonderful. But enthusiasm from one person doesn't mean the buying group is actually aligned. Now consider that CRM opportunity again. The Chief Revenue Officer wants more reliable forecasting and better visibility into sales performance. The Chief Financial Officer wants to understand the cost of financial return and the risk of investing in another system. The Chief Operating Officer may be concerned about implementation and the effect on existing processes. And the CEO, uh, wants to know whether the investment supports the company's strategic priorities. Each person has a legitimate perspective. The challenge is bringing those perspectives together around the result that the organization agrees is worth pursuing. Gartner research found that 74% of B2B buying teams demonstrate unhealthy conflict during the decision making process. Now that's interesting. The same research found that buying groups that reach consensus are two and a half times more likely to report a, uh, high quality deal. Those findings have direct implications for sales management. When a seller reports that a proposal is waiting for approval, the manager needs to understand what approval actually involves. Has finance accepted the business case? Does operations understand the implementation requirements? Has the executive sponsor agreed that the outcome justifies the investment? Always the salesperson relying on one enthusiastic contact to resolve all those questions internally. That distinction can explain why an opportunity remains in the forecast for months without any progress. There is also a personal dimension to these decisions. A CFO may support better forecasting because it improves financial planning, but the result may also affect that person's confidence when presenting projections to the board. A UH sales leader, for example, may want to improve pipeline visibility because it supports revenue performance while personally wanting fewer surprises during quarterly reviews. You know, these are some examples of motivations a salesperson might need to uncover, rather than assumptions they should make about every single stakeholder in the decision making process. The point is that business outcomes affect the people responsible for achieving them. Understanding those individual priorities can help a seller communicate the value of the same investment to different stakeholders. And once the desired outcome is clear, it should guide the deal strategy, the stakeholder, uh, conversations, and the business case. So how do we give a customer that currently sits on the fence a compelling reason to reconsider? There is a really good way that experienced sellers can contribute to that buying decision and influence it even more strongly. In our work at Global Performance Group, we call it bringing and sharing. A, uh, nugget of value. A nugget of value is a carefully selected piece of information, an experience or an insight that helps the customer recognize something they hadn't fully considered yet. For example, consider a clinical lab evaluating, let's say, diagnostic equipment. The discussion is focused on instrument performance and the price per test. Now consider a lab conducting 12,000 tests annually with a, uh, 4% repeat rate. If every repeated test requires 30 minutes of staff time, that represents 240 hours of staff time every single year. That calculation introduces another consideration into the purchasing decision. Of course, the customer can examine the cost of repeat testing, the use of staff capacity, and the effect on turnaround times. They now have a broader basis for evaluating the equipment than price per test alone. And that's big. The figures of course, in this case are, uh, just an example. But the commercial principle applies across many different industries and organizations. Salesperson working with a manufacturing company, for example, might help a customer quantify the Cost of production downtime. Someone selling logistics solutions might identify how delivery delays affect inventory or working capital. In each case, the insight or the nugget of value needs to be supported by the customer's actual circumstances. Now the salesperson should be able to explain the assumption, test them with the buyer, and show why the information is so relevant to them. That requires, of course, a level of preparation and a level of judgment for the situation in the sales process. A generic industry statistic may be interesting, but it won't necessarily influence a decision. The real skill is recognizing which information could help a particular customer understand their situation more accurately and and impact their outcomes more favorably. And while that sounds so simple and straightforward, applying it consistently is where many sales organizations encounter difficulties. Now let's talk about sales methodologies and why knowing the methodology just isn't enough anymore. Think about the way most sales training programs are structured. Salespeople attend, uh, the workshop, learn the methodology, practice the techniques, and demonstrate that they have an intellectual understanding of the concept. Then they return to their real life, to their accounts, to their day to day activities. They got customers expecting responses, proposals to complete, forecasts to update, and managers asking when these opportunities finally close. And they are dealing with situations that are, uh, considerably more complicated than the exercises they have practiced during the training course. A salesperson may understand how to establish a customer's desired outcome, but struggle when the customer insists on discussing product features. For example, they may know to build stakeholder alignment, but have limited access to the CFO or other executive sponsors. They may also understand the importance of bringing insights, nuggets of value, but find it difficult to select the right information for the particular conversation. Those are execution challenges. The salesperson needs to decide how to apply the methodology to that specific customer, buying group and commercial situation in front of them. And that's why sales development needs to extend into real opportunities people are actually working on and trying to progress. I'm talking about opportunities the sales organization has deliberately identified for focused coaching. That could be a strategic account that company has targeted for expansion, for example, or a uh, larger qualified opportunity in the current revenue forecast. Or a stored deal where the customer has a recognized need but hasn't agreed on the way forward. The sales leader and the salesperson, of course, should select opportunities where improving the quality of customer conversation can affect a significant commercial decision. Once an opportunity is selected, the manager and the salesperson can work through the actual customer situation. Which outcome has the customer agreed they need? Which stakeholder supports the investment, who still has concerns, and what information would help the buying Group evaluate its options and what should the seller do in the next customer meeting? Now the methodology becomes something the salesperson can actually apply to real decisions. Building a process around real opportunities is going to be key to any of these initiatives. If you want salespeople to consistently apply outcome based selling, we need to build the development process around the customer opportunities they are already pursuing. Here is one way of doing it. Begin with leadership alignment. Sales managers need to agree on the behaviors they're going to coach to how they evaluate whether those behaviors are being applied in their real deals. If the training encourages outcome focused discovery, for example. But uh, pipeline reviews focus exclusively on deal value and expected close dates. Sellers receive conflicting signals about what's the important and the outcome that this needs to drive. The next stage involves selecting real deals from the pipeline. Those opportunities become the focus of a uh, real deal boot camp where sellers examine customer opportunities, stakeholder priorities, business cases, and the conversations required to advance each of these opportunities. From there, AI skill practice allows sellers to rehearse specific conversations before speaking with customers and the different Personas in the sales process. For example, a salesperson could practice discussing financial risk with a skeptical CFO or explore the consequences of delaying a decision with another executive sponsor. The purpose is to build the capability to handle those conversations with more effectively. Coaching clinics then provide an opportunity to review what's happening in those life deals. Managers can examine what the salesperson tried, how the customer has responded, why obstacles remain, and what adjustments may be needed now. Finally, the organization measures changes in behavior, deal progression and commercial results and outcomes. That sequence matters because it gives sales leaders more evidence than a training completion report or smiley sheets as others call them. They can see whether salespeople are using the methodology, which opportunities they are progressing and which actions can be connected to the results. And we have an example of how this was actually applied. A Fortune 500 pilot involved 15 sellers. The program combined an outcome based selling boot camp, real deal coaching and AI skill practice. Of course, everything customized to the specific selling motion and buying motion of the customers customers. Out of these 15 participants, 10 reported measurable deal impact and eight deals were closed. The pilot documented around 1.4 million in closing revenue attributed directly to the outcome based selling behavior change process. It also recorded almost $6.4 million in deal progression with 12 additional new deals in progress. Those figures deserve attention, but we need to interpret them carefully. Of course, the documented attribution connects sales action with commercial outcomes and it does prove that uh, a combination of a sales methodology, a behavior change process connected to it all applied to real deals can achieve these kind of results. And that's, of course, a different way and a different level of measurement. It's not about smiley sheets anymore. It's not about how good did you find the workshop was and did you enjoy it. Uh, this is really about how the numbers show up in your deals through the application of the real deal improvement process in this case. And of course, for sales leaders who need to decide where to invest a budget in any of those initiatives, those distinctions are really important. You want to know where the sellers changed, how they handled their sales, conversations with their customers, whether those changes were observed or documented, and what happened to the opportunities involved. You also want to understand which part of the approach needs further reinforcement and where else can we apply the skills and behaviors? Because developing sales capability is an ongoing management responsibility. So let me give you a practical way to use these ideas before your next pipeline review. Choose three qualified opportunities. Start with a strategic account that, uh, your company has identified as a priority for growth. Then select a high value opportunity in your forecast where the customer hasn't committed to a decision yet. And finally, choose a deal that's been stalled long enough to raise questions about whether it will close at all. For each opportunity, ask your salesperson to explain the business outcome the customer wants to achieve. Listen for a specific result. If they say the customer wants a new CRM, better software, or improved reporting, keep going. What will the customer be able to do differently? Which business problem will improve? How will they measure success? Then map out the buying group and the different stakeholders within that buying group who needs to approve that decision? Which stakeholders have agreed on the outcome? Where are the unresolved concerns they may have about cost, risk, or implementation? Next, uh, ask what the customer understands today that they didn't understand before engaging with your salesperson. As the salesperson, help them, um, quantify a problem, recognize a risk, or identify an opportunity. Finally, review the next customer conversation. Who will participate? What decision, or what need needs to come out of that meeting? And how is the salesperson prepared to handle the question or objection they are likely to encounter? Those answers will give you much clearer view of how your methodology is being applied. They may also reveal why some opportunities aren't progressing. Perhaps the customer hasn't established a compelling reason to act. Perhaps the business case doesn't address the CFO's concern. Or perhaps the seller needs help preparing for a conversation with a stakeholder, uh, they haven't yet engaged with before. Now you have a specific coaching opportunity, and that brings us back to, to the question I asked at the beginning, are, uh, your salespeople getting better at selling or are they simply getting better at attending sales trainings? You won't find the answer in a workshop evaluation. You will find it in the customer conversations your people are, uh, having, the decisions they are helping buyers make, and the progress they are creating in qualified opportunities. There is a principle I believe captures the purpose of all of this really well. The sale is an agreement. The outcome is the value it was meant to create. When customers invest in a solution, they are expecting something in their business to improve. Our responsibility is to help them understand that outcome, evaluate the options, and make a decision they can support. And as a sales leader, our responsibility is is to make sure the methodology we have invested in is helping our people do that consistently. So before approving another sales training course, I'd encourage you to ask one key question. How will we know whether the sellers are applying what they have learned to the actual customer opportunities we're trying to win here? If you can answer that clearly, you've got a much broader basis for deciding how to develop your team and measure the outcomes and result of it. If you found this episode useful, share it with another sales leader or colleague who's responsible for improving win rates, coaching salespeople, or developing strategic accounts. If you'd like to revisit the research, review the Real Deal application framework or or use the examples to start a conversation with your own sales manager. Download, uh, our white paper, beyond the Solution Turning Outcome Based Selling into Real Deal Performance. You will find the link in the description below. If you found this episode valuable like share it, subscribe to it, wherever you get your podcast from my, uh, lovely people. Until the next time, take care of yourself, your loved ones, and of course your B2B customers. Bye bye.