REVENUE GROWTH BLOG

“Buyers don’t buy products, they buy the outcomes the products deliver.”
Darrell Amy, Revenue Growth Engine

For those who are obsessed with their products, the superiority of their business, or the beauty of their brand, this statement contains a hard pill to swallow. As great as your products are, as experienced as your team is, and as responsive your customer service may be, that's not what buyers are buying. People do not buy your products, they buy the outcomes your products create. 

Bob Moesta explores this principle in Demand-Side Sales 101. He shares the story of how he stopped trying to push his product on customers. Instead, he worked to understand the actual outcomes the customer desired. Then he engineered the buying process to satisfy the customer’s demand.

Buyers have a “job to be done”. That is why they buy a product. Period.

The “Jobs to be Done” theory (pioneered by Moesta and Clayton Christiansen one of my...

Trust is the currency of business. Without trust, business dies. 

The challenge is that trust is at an all-time low. The Edelman Trust Barometer continues to present data that shows people are very distrusting.

While low trust may feel discouraging, the good news is that companies and salespeople that build and maintain trust create an incredible competitive advantage. 

How do you build trust? I want to propose a formula:

TRUST = MESSAGE + RELATIONSHIP + EXECUTION

This formula is based on three questions:

1. MESSAGE: Can you help me solve my problems and achieve my goals?
2. RELATIONSHIP: Who have you helped?
3. EXECUTION: Do you deliver on what you promise?

Let’s explore how these three factors work together. 

Message

The first component of trust must answer the fundamental question: “Can you help me solve my problems and achieve my goals?” Buyers don’t buy products, they buy the outcomes the products deliver. And the outcomes buyers are looking for...

Is your company message delicious and sticky? Or, is it watered down and bland?

As a child one of my favorite events of the spring was making maple syrup. As the snow would begin to melt, we would head out into the woods. Holes would be drilled in trees for the spouts that would gather sap into buckets. Then, we would drag 40 gallon barrels through the woods to collect the sap.

In the middle of the forest was the sugar shack. This housed a firebox with a vat on top. The sap would be poured into the vat. Over the following hours the sap would be boiled down to create the most delicious substance on earth: maple syrup.

It takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup. The sap tastes like the melted ice after finish a soft drink. There is a little bit of sugar, but no one would say it is delicious. Maple syrup, however, is sweet, smooth, and sticky—pure joy.

Your company message needs to be delicious and sticky. Creating this message is very similar to making...

By Guest Author, Lee Salz

If you are a follower of my articles and blogs, you know I reside in Minneapolis, but I’m not originally from here. I grew up in the New York/New Jersey area. I don’t need to tell you how brutal the winters are here as the media does a great job of painting that picture. When I moved here, I was not issued Minnesota skin. I still have my East Coast skin. I can deal with the cold, but there are some things I won’t do in subfreezing temperatures.

A great example of something I won’t do in the cold is dealing with my dogs’ poo. I have two, shelter-adopted dogs that weigh about sixty pounds each. From Thanksgiving until March, the dogs “do their business” in my backyard, and I don’t clean it up until Spring. Before you say, “That’s disgusting,” keep in mind the climate in which I live. The poo is covered by snow most of that time and is completely frozen.

As you can probably imagine, there is a...