Customer Success has grown in popularity, with the explosion of consumer-focused technology products and services. As customer success evolves into a full-fledged discipline and organizational focus, it’s important to ensure that Customer Success and Sales are working together toward the same outcome, which can be achieved through Outcome-Based Selling (OBS). Learn how Account Managers, Account Executives, and Customer Success can work together to achieve common goals using OBS.
What is OBS?
OBS is a repeatable and flexible selling methodology that enables Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and Account Executives (AEs) to expand accounts by driving increased consumption of products and services. This leads to new opportunities for revenue generation, both from upsells as well as larger contracts for renewals. OBS is built on three key principles: customer focus, commercial focus, and collaborative approach. Read more about these principles below.
Principles of Outcome-Based Selling
The customer determines what success looks like, and they pay for it. The company stays out of it. In other words, there is no right answer here—the customer decides what is or isn’t successful in relation to their business needs, and then pays for that outcome (through pricing). At its core, OBS is a shift in power from your company to your customers.
How it works in practice
Identify strategic opportunities for upsell and cross-sell. With outcome-based selling, CSMs and AMs don’t just sell—they provide their customers with actionable guidance for onboarding, adoption, usage, and expansion. For example: New signups who purchase a simple starter package will likely need additional training in order to achieve desired results with their product. These customers may also benefit from support throughout their engagement as they become more familiar with features and use cases. This scenario calls for an upsell or a cross-sell of a professional or enterprise package.
The benefits of OBS
An outcome-based sales methodology can provide a lot of benefits for both B2B businesses and their customers. With it, companies can increase customer satisfaction, improve their overall customer retention rate, and make more money. CSMs and AMs are in a great position to drive OBS because they already have frequent contact with customers.
Conclusion
It's time for a new approach: an outcome-based selling (OBS) approach. Learn how CSMs and Account Managers can expand accounts and drive net-new revenue without negatively affecting their relationship with customers.