068: Sell Results, Not Processes

SYE Ep 068 === Speaker: Let me tell you about a conversation I had this week with a client. I'm telling you, she is brilliant, like scary, smart. She knows her processes inside now, every step, every tool, every workflow. And she says to me, Renee, I'm putting together this video for the CEO.

I'm gonna show them exactly how everything works. And I said. Not on my watch. You're not?

Oh no, we are not gonna do that. because here's the reality, the more you explain the details of your process, the less people buy. Have you ever heard anybody tell you they don't know why? They don't wanna know how the sausage is made?

Like they don't? So that is a thing we say because of this very reason. All right, welcome back to the Selling Your Expertise podcast. I'm Renee Rebar, and I help women sell their expertise in a way that actually works without overcomplicating it or overthinking it, or over explaining it.

Whether you found me by reading my book or one of my talks like. The one I did for TEDx, or you just happened upon this by searching for sales help. I'm glad you're here today. We're talking about one of the biggest mistakes I see very smart women make when they're trying to land bigger clients, especially corporate, especially with decision makers with a C in front of their title, This scenario with the CEO.

All right, back to my story. Here's what happens. So I want you to imagine that you're preparing for a pitch, a proposal, a demo, a presentation, and you think I need to show them how good I am, right? I've gotten that feeling before, and believe me, I'm telling you this.

Because I have been there, and yes, I did coach my client through this. I'm sharing a specific story with you because that's how I learn best, and I think that is a great way to show that you're not alone and that yes, this happens to everyone unless you practice a better way. So when you start to prepare for that pitch, proposal, demo or presentation, and you are trying to show someone how good you are, even though PS they already know. Here's what happens, right?

I've done this. I build out the full process. I show them all the steps. I've done it.

I walk through the tech, I've done it. I explain every excruciating detail. Yeah, because in your brain, just like I've gone through and just like my client went through, you think this, you think if they understand how it works, they'll see the value. Ah.

And you probably have heard me say, listen, it's never about the price. It's always about the value, but your buyer, they're sitting there like, why is this so complicated? So I do share often with my clients when they're making presentations to create graphics in a place like Na Napkin, do AI or Notebook, LM or Manus, or wherever you find your way through graphics, Canva, God help us. But I tell them with explicit instructions that once they make that graphic, it is not a teaching moment.

It is a showing like this exists, but we're not gonna dive into this right now. It's that kind of moment because here's the reality, right? Reality check, your buyer does not want to understand your process, especially when you're a done for you service provider or a B2B high level consultant. What your client wants to understand are these three things.

Will this make me money or will this save me time or. The biggest one, will this actually solve my problem? That's it. That's the whole game.

And if you miss that, you lose the sale even from the beginning, even before you've said the price. So about this client. Obviously I never call my clients on the carpet. so we'll call her Rebecca, obviously not her real name.

it was the name on my fake ID though when I was 17. Hello? Who's listening? My parents.

I never, I deny it. How come? It doesn't matter how old you are, if you ever have something that you wanna share, something you did wrong as a kid, I was a total knucklehead. As a kid.

I cannot. I was a knucklehead and I'm so glad that there was no social media back then. I might not have made it to today. I still feel embarrassed.

Rebecca Murphy. That's, that was what was on my fake id. I didn't even wanna drink. I just wanted to go into the dance clubs and you had to be 18 or 19 sometimes.

Okay. Anyway, I digress. So my client who we're calling Rebecca, because I think that's funny, also, again, not her real name, she's putting together this short video, right? And so she tells me, okay, I'm gonna go through and show exactly how it all works, how it integrates, how it generates summaries.

And I, that's what I stopped her. I was like, okay, here's what I know. The CEO does not care how all of that works. He doesn't even know he's lost.

He's glazed over. When you start talking like that. Here's what he cares about. How much time is being wasted right now by his team?

How much money is being left in the table by them not using this, how fast this fixes his problem. And right now they weren't even leveraging any AI for summarizing meetings. And she was going in there doing a whole co-pilot trading. That's what she was offering them.

So the gap was huge. Think about it. They weren't even getting transcripts, they weren't even summarizing them, like just that alone. So she was about to go in and fill the gap with a tutorial.

Nope, we're not doing that. So here is the big shift that I want you to write down or commit to memory. If you're out on a walk or at the gym, sell the outcome, not the mechanism. It is very much like if you've ever read or looked up the documentary around how the iPod came to be.

MP three players had been around for a long time until the iPod, but this guy from Michigan came along and said, we're not solving the end users' problem. They bought all these DVDs, CDs, all this music, and now we're telling 'em to go on this digital device and basically. What? And so that's when he came up with thousand songs in your pocket, That is an outcome based, not mechanism based.

So let me show you what that looks like in your world, your old way. What most people do is, here's how the system works. Step one, step two, step three, and then they go into, this goes for sales pages too. They go into all the details.

In week one, we'll do this. In week two we do this, and believe you me, I. Am the first person to slide down this slippery slope because I, as the creator of whatever I'm offering, I'm geeked about it. I'm super psyched.

I'm so excited about all the little pieces and pots that I've figured out that I'm gonna give you an ah, but guess what All you care about is, is this gonna make me money? Is this gonna save time? And is this gonna actually solve my problem? Right?

Put yourself in the buyer's shoes so when you start going through all the details of how it works. You lose them immediately. I don't know about you, but if you have a father-in-law like I do, very sweet, love him to death. If you also know we live 10 feet away from him and his wife, that means I am living and everybody loves Raymond.

This is my life. Laugh now. he'll come over. God help me if I ask him to do something.

My husband's always like, don't ask him. Because he wants to gimme a tutorial. Former welder still teaches. God bless him.

I had asked him something very simple. I needed to get the stupid battery out of my electric toothbrush. It's a very simple thing. I just, I didn't wanna break the toothbrush and I didn't wanna cor the battery.

It out so that I could clean the toothbrush safely and then put the batteries back in. And so my husband wasn't home and I just walked next door. I was like, Hey pop, I got this thing. And he went, I was there for an hour.

He went through. For his tutorial that I was held captive for. He went through the details of how the toothbrush works, how batteries work, and I didn't know it all small. Some of it I was aware of, but I didn't know all of it.

It was interesting. I learned something. But if I had been a buyer, I would've been like, I'm out. And for these reasons I'm out.

So the old way is going long and lengthy and trying to give a tutorial about everything because you know it. And sometimes it's because you want other people to know, you know it because you're trying to prove yourself, which you don't have to. Or you're just trying to be nice and you think, well, if I know it, they should know it, and they probably do wanna know it, I'll let them know it. We live in the age of information.

I remember before the internet. Yes, I'm that old. I was an adult, full on adult, had graduated from university, had my own company. I was already married.

That's when the internet came out. And I remember when the internet came out, I was like, cool, more information. Because I remember before the internet, I thought, people would act better. They would do better if they just had more information.

People need to read more. That's what I thought. That's the thought I had in my head. That's the belief I lived under until now.

We live in the age of information and it's proven not to be true. So back to the old way. Let me give you more information so that you understand, so that you can figure this out. No, the new way.

Here it is the new way. What actually sells your new way. If you're listening, I'm putting it in your mind. Here's what's happening right now.

This is what you wanna say. This is what I coached my client to say. So she was like, here's what's happening now. You don't have any meeting summaries.

You have inconsistent communication time wasted looking things up that should be at your fingertips. Then here's what this creates, right? Faster, follow up, consistent messaging, more projects done. That is what we got her pitch down to ver see how short that is versus this tutorial that she was gonna share about how it all works.

And then since she was talking to the CEO about how AI helps his sales team, initially I told her to ask him this, if this reduced your sales cycle by 20%, just even 20%, what would that mean for your business? Boom. He was like, his eyes lit up, his face got bright. He's like, yeah, I want it.

He hadn't even heard the price yet. See what I'm saying? Like mic drop. He hadn't even heard the price yet.

Yes, I want it. That right there, she said less. She focused on what he said he wanted, and then she did the last thing. Like what if all this did was right.

Okay. So let's break down why this works. Because decision makers don't decide based on your process, it's important that they know you have a process. Ideally, if you have your own unique signature process or proven process, that's important, but decision makers decide based on perceived impact on them.

So during my coaching session with my client here that I'm. Using as my muse today. We literally walked through this. I had her infuse some stats, right?

what businesses gain by a process that she could infuse into their business. To show the time saved huge. She had some data on that to show the revenue impact, so she knew their current sales numbers. When you add in 20%, it made a huge difference and it was way more than she was about to offer them.

She also showed the efficiency gains, being able to have a shorter team, a smaller team with a shorter learning cycle, so much more. So it was never about the tool that she was bringing in it. It was not even about the steps that she was gonna walk them through her proven process. It's always about the result.

All right, so let's break down the results. First demo framework. Here we go. Here's the framework I want you using from now.

On here to four. Here to four. Sorry, my accents are horrible. Okay, so number one, current state.

What's broken? I want you to say this right now. And then list what's broken as they said it in their words. So think about what your client is saying to you when you are in a conversation with someone and you're preparing for a pitch, a demo, an offer.

Have you asked enough questions? Because if you don't know the answer to this, if you don't know how they would answer what's broken, you need to ask more questions because you need it to close. Number two, what's the cost of the problem? So this means the problems they said they have.

Back to the questions before you get to the offer. Ask the questions so that you know the answer to what this is costing them. And I mean, numbers, they're in business. There's money.

So follow the money. Step number three, the future state. So after your solution, so say this with my unique proven process, you could get what they said they wanted. Again, use their words, not yours.

Back to the iPod story and thousand songs in your pocket. That's what the people who are gonna buy the iPod. Wanted, they wanted a thousand songs in their pocket. Wow.

I could only fit 16 tracks on my cassette tape, or eight on my cd. Wow. That's amazing. 'cause back then, PS we were walking around with, I mean, I had a portable CD player.

With headphones. What? How did I live? Seriously?

I had a Walkman in middle school, the cool yellow one? Mm-hmm. I still have it. Okay, so, and I took the batteries out.

All right. Here's step number four here. I want you to say this. Ready?

If all this does is do, do, do, it's still a win. So if all this does is get you one new client over the next three months, it's a win. If that, and that is something I've said many times because often the people I work with, if they work with me for three months and they sign one new client, they've just broke even. And they're never gonna unlearn.

They're never gonna forget what they learned. They're gonna use it over and over and over. And the cool part is they often get that next new client way faster than they imagined. Way faster.

And I love that about that. So I love what I do. I love it. But right here with that, if all this does is do, do, do this one thing, it's still a win.

When you frame it like that, like that, like that's you being Sully landing, the pa like landing the plane on the Hudson, that's you, that's where you land the plane. They're like, ah. That's it because the buyer, you can see it in their face, their eyes light up, their face gets brighter, their back straightens. They're like, that's it.

And that's very much why I love face-to-face connection. Face-to-face sales is because it's like being a comedian with a live audience, right? Like in the, is. Those, uh, CD bars, right?

Like you can see what jokes hit. You might get to see the Netflix special, but that comedian for the year before that was probably in 50 different little smoky clubs, practicing, trying out all their other jokes, all their other bits, and seeing. Faces of the audience. Now the benefit is I've already seen the faces of the audience and I can share with you all the things you need to say, and that's why you're here, right?

So I'm gonna tell you what I shared with her. Ready. He doesn't need to know how, he just needs to believe that, you know how, lemme say that again. For the people in the back, they don't need to understand your process.

They just need to trust. You do, right? Just like Sully landing the plane on the Hudson, the passengers don't need to know how to fly a plane. They just need to believe that the pilot does, and he did.

So again, you know, I'm a New Yorker, so I love that story, but like the reality is this high level buyers care about revenue, time, risk, and reputation. That's it. So when you, when I coached this out with my client, we layered in phrases that the CEO had explicitly said he cared about during discovery. Like I said, I know I have to be able to close in a certain way using their words.

If I don't ask the right questions during discovery, I won't be able to do that. If I rush through the questions, if I say I know what they're gonna say, I know this buyer inside and out, and I guess, but I get it wrong. I'm not gonna close the deal or my chances immediately diminish. So when we coach this out, here are the phrases I asked her to say, and I'm gonna give 'em to you right now.

This will help you make more money. This reduces wasted time. This is safe and ethical, especially because she is an AI expert and so a lot of the companies that she's working with are concerned about their ip, about the ethics, and so she needed to make sure that they understood she had a process that kept it safe and ethical. This improves your reputation and it did.

So those are the main key phrases I want you to have. I call them pocket phrases. Keep 'em in your pocket. That's the language I coached my client to use because the key to selling is to listen and to repeat back the customer, to the customer, to repeat back to the customer what they feel is important, right?

So. That's the language I coached my client to use because the key to selling is to listen and repeat back to the customer what they feel is important. Alright? Here's where people mess this up.

Let me call this out. You lose the sale when you teach instead of cell. When you overexplain instead of simplify, and again, I am not saying I will never make this mistake again. I just have made it 10,000 times and I've learned the hard way and now I have these processes that help me and you do the right thing.

'cause when you sell your services to someone. Are you gonna hurt 'em? No, you're gonna help 'em. that's why you started your whole business.

You wanna help people. So when they finally say yes, you're not like, haha, I gotcha. You're like, awesome. I get to help them.

So when you lose the sale, it's often that you're over teaching, over explaining, or you're focused on tools instead of outcomes. Right? Do you wanna talk about the features and benefits of an MP three player or a thousand songs in your pocket? Or you try to prove yourself instead of position your solution as the answer that they've been looking for All along, I tease, threaten, maybe both my clients that I'm gonna start singing.

Do you remember the movie American Tale with five? Like somewhere out there? Yeah. Nobody wants to hear me sing.

I remember in middle school when. Chorus was like an elective, and I was like, I'll take chorus, I'll give it a shot. And then the chorus teacher was like, are you a soprano? Are you an alto?

Are you, I'm like, I don't know. I don't even know what those words mean. And she's like, you gotta sing the notes. I'm like, I don't, I sing with the beat.

I feel the rhythm. She's like, yeah, we'll get you out of this class now. Good thing it's only a semester. All right, so here's one.

Weekly challenge for you. It's gonna be a little uncomfortable. You ready? Number one, take one Offer or service that you have currently.

Remove all the process explanation. So go through what you do on the phone, or whether it's a pitch or a pitch deck or a video or whatever you're doing to make the offer and rewrite it using only problem, result, and impact, and then report back to me on how it's going because that. It is a challenge. It's hard for us as experts to look at our own offers and.

Evaluate them based on the customer's point of view, because it, we've been there and back again. We have so much energy and information that we've had to gain to get to the point where we could solve the problem, where we could get the result, where we could help them make the impact that it's very hard for us to forget all that and go back to the base of the mountain where we didn't know anything and looking up going, wow, I need help with this. That's where your customer's at.

But you gotta, 'cause you've gotta go there and get back to that. So it's really difficult. It's kind of like how it's more difficult. I don't know if you've ever gone to your, like your friend is moving, like, it's easy for me to go help my friend move.

Oh yeah, let's get rid of this. I'll help you go to the dump, I'll help you toss this, I'll help you clean this, my own house. No, it's so difficult. I gotta get somebody else to do it.

Right. So that's my big challenge you, and that's why it's gonna be a little uncomfortable. But if this episode called you out a little bit good, because that means you're ready. You're ready to get out my email list and get more talk just like this on a regular basis.

And if you want help turning your expertise into something that actually sells, go to ask me coach.com for this week's newest way to hang out beyond this podcast. Imagine me and you hanging out in a private coaching session. What would we uncover that could grow your income and make your life even simpler?

All right. Remember this, you don't need to explain more. You need to simplify better. Same expertise, new language.

That's how we get paid. Alright? Remember to check out the previous episodes. All are filled with specific actions and real coaching stories to make your selling your expertise.

Simple and fun. All right, I'll see you soon.