The one question sales leaders should ask every prospect

Key takeaways:

• Sales leaders should ask potential customers about the outcome they need to achieve to be successful.
• Starting with an outcome focus makes it easier for sales leads to kick off an entire customer lifecycle, rather than just a quick handoff. 
• An outcome-first approach is the foundation of a customer-led growth motion, where new logos are seeded with the potential for retention, upsell, and expansion.

After 15+ years as a marketing leader with revenue ownership, Karen Budell understands how marketing and sales work together.

But as Chief Marketing Officer of Totango, she’s also focused on driving revenue from existing customers, not just new logos—something sales leaders haven’t been tasked with before.

In a recent episode of the Pipeline Visionaries podcast, Karen shared her one wish for sales leaders as every business aims toward sustainable, repeatable growth motions.

This blog shares a few key takeaways. Listen to the entire episode for all of Karen’s comments and tips.

Begin each engagement with the customer’s outcome in mind

Sales teams are great at identifying needs and pains—then turning that into a conversation about why your solution is great for them. 

Keep doing this, said Karen, but also remember to clarify the customer’s desired outcomes. 

“[Start] those conversations with your prospect about, ‘What is the outcome that they're trying to achieve?’” said Karen.

This stems from the fact that companies succeed long-term when they continually deliver value to customers, rather than continually chase new logos and ignore existing customers. And the way to do that is to figure out what they actually want to achieve, then help them do it with your platform or solution.

Kick off a lifecycle, not just a hand-off

When the whole company is aligned around customer outcomes and ROI, another element changes: the sales-to-customer success handoff. 

“As you close the deal and make that handoff to your customer success and post-sale team, everyone's goal should be making sure you're delivering value to your customers on a recurring basis,” said Karen. 

When customer success (CS) has a customer’s core goal in mind, they can act as strategic advisors and champions for the outcome, rather than booking meetings to talk about inputs or if someone is “happy” with the platform. 

This data in aggregate also provides valuable insights to marketing and sales alike—marketing can use it for both customer campaigns and new lead campaigns. Similarly, sales leaders are able to pre-qualify customers more quickly by understanding the outcomes they need and what your platform is able to deliver. 

When that machine starts humming along, you can more easily identify upsell, cross-sell, and expansion opportunities. That’s the core of building a customer-led growth engine that really begins to drive recurring revenue.

“You want them to win. Having your customers achieve success is your success,” said Karen. 

It’s all relationships

The thought of asking sales for a favor might send chills down your spine.

As the team responsible for new-logo revenue, many don’t want to get in their way.

But first, it’s important to realize that CS is directly responsible for an increasing amount of revenue. Not only do 83% of CS teams have retention quotas, but 68% have expansion quotas as well. Your team is a revenue team.

And second, Karen’s advice is to prioritize the human in the room. Their title might be VP of Sales (or similar), but they are also a person—talk to them as a peer, get to know them as a human, and then think about any ask you have of them. 

"Don't underestimate the importance of getting to know your peers and investing in those relationships, because that is really going to be the key to your success."

— Karen Budell, CMO, Totango

Listen to Karen’s full interview on Pipeline Visionaries, and learn how Totango can help your business achieve customer-led growth.