In the ever-changing landscape of customer-facing roles, from sales and customer success, to onboarding and customer support, there's a skill that stands out as indispensable: the ability to dig deep to uncover customer outcomes.
This skill isn't just about scratching the surface of customer questions or needs; it's about delving into the heart of their objectives and outcomes.
Let's explore why digging deep to uncover your customer's outcomes is so crucial and how it can drive customer retention and expansion.
Why It's Important to Understand Customer Outcomes?
The ability to unearth the genuine business-level outcomes that your product or service facilitates is key in retaining and expanding your customer base.
Why? Your customers retain and expand because of the outcomes they're going to get with your product.
Customers aren't just investing in features; they're investing in solutions that address their specific needs and goals (think increasing revenue, decreasing costs, saving time, etc).
So... do you know which outcomes matter most to your customers? If you don't, you're certainly not measuring those outcomes with your customers.
Which means you're leaving A LOT of money on the table.
By uncovering these outcomes and results, you not only align your efforts with your customers but also foster stronger, more enduring relationships together.
Purpose of Digging Deep To Uncover Outcomes
At its core, digging deep is about understanding what truly matters to your customer in terms of business-level outcomes and results, and tying that back to your product/service.
It's about moving beyond the initial request or inquiry and uncovering the underlying motivations driving their engagement with your product or service.
Without this understanding, it's challenging to deliver value that resonates with the customer's objectives.
Three Simple Steps To Uncover Outcomes
When you're working to uncover the outcomes that matter most to your customers, there are three main steps that will help you have this conversation:
The Initial Question
Peeling Back The Layers
Validating The Outcome
Let's go through each one 👇🏻
1. Initial Question
The best way to start with a customer is to ask a leading question. This helps get the conversation started correctly and in the right direction.
Example questions you could ask:
What does success look like for you?
What are you hoping to achieve by using our product/service?
How do you envision our product impacting your goals?
Ask the right leading questions that gets them to open up more. Steer away from simple Yes/No types of questions.
2. Peel Back The Layers
More often than not, when asking what success looks like by using your product, your customer is going to give you a surface level answer (i.e. helping with a specific task, using a specific feature, etc). This is where you dig deeper into the main business-level outcomes that you help your customers achieve.
I like to think of this as peeling back the layers of an onion (Shrek, anyone?). The best way to peel back the layers? Asking the right questions!
Example questions to peel back the layers:
Why is ______ important for you or your team?
How does ______ fit within your strategic goals this year?
Could you tell me a bit more about ______. What is driving that?
👀 NOTE: The important part in peeling back layers, is that they all need to tie back to what the customer said in your initial question.
So if your customer responded with something like "completing a task" then your questions should revolve around that task: "Why would completing that task be important for you or your team?"
You're likely going to have to keep asking questions around "why" - some people refer to this as the five-why's to get to the root cause. The concept is the same - keep peeling back layers until you get to the true root outcome.
3. Validate The Outcome:
Once you've successfully peeled back the layers and uncovered the business-level outcomes that matter most to your customer, you need to validate the outcome.
This part of the skill is the finishing touch! It's the cherry-on-top (do people really enjoy maraschino cherries?). This is what marries your product/services to the outcomes that matter most with your customers.
And it's really simple to do:
It sounds like you're using our product to __________. Is that right?
To make sure I understand correctly, your main goal is to __________?
So, you're ultimately wanting to use our product to __________, right?
You're looking for that magical "That's right" from the customer. Why? Because now you have established what success looks like, and have tied it directly to your product/service.
Free Skill-Guide Download:
Want a copy of this skill-guide and desk reference? Click 👇🏻 here to download.
I've Uncovered The Outcome! What's Next?
Once you've successfully uncovered which outcome matters most to your customer, you need to document it, send it to the customer, and align your efforts in helping them measure and achieve those outcomes continually.
This means that, depending on where the customer is in their journey with your product, you're both actively working towards those outcomes in each stage:
Sales: Uncover the outcomes early and customize your demo/solution around those specific outcomes to help you close better deals (and more quickly).
Onboarding: Align all of the specific steps your customer must take in onboarding to begin seeing those outcomes quickly.
Customer Success: Continually measure the impact your product/service is having on those outcomes and align on the next set of outcomes going forward.
Expansion: Use these outcomes to help show your customer how they can get more/new outcomes with additional products/services
Etc.
This is why its SO important to start these types of conversations early in the customer's journey. If you've done this type of work in each stage of the customer journey, your renewal conversations are simple.
You've got this! 👊
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