Losing your most profitable sales relationships is a concern for every professional. To protect this relationship, you must help your customers identify realistic and observable indicators of your solution’s value. If you don’t, you’re linking your personal success with dozens of factors that are totally out of your control.
The way I like to help set realistic, tangible expectation is by asking three important questions:
1. How will you measure the success of this solution?
2. Six months from today, how will you know this solution is a success?
3. What things will be happening when the value you expect is being achieved?
The answers you receive will be your customers’ expectations of value. Based on their answers, you must determine if it’s possible to achieve what they want. If so, great. If not, then it’s your responsibility to transform vague or unrealistic expectations to specific and tangible outcomes, much as you did when you help customers define intangible buying criteria in more tangible terms.
Sales Managers: These three questions need to be incorporated in all of your sales training.
