Start serving the steak: how to sell outcomes instead of your process
Lori came to me after trying everything.
Courses. Books. Expert advice from people who hadn’t sold anything in years.
She was a career coach with real skills and a real offer.
But she was closing almost nobody.
I asked her to walk me through a typical sales call.
About ninety seconds in, I could see the problem.
She was coming out of the kitchen to explain the recipe before she’d cooked a single thing.
Your prospect didn’t ask for a cooking lesson
Lori was telling people about her frameworks.
Her methodologies.
Her full step-by-step process.
Beautifully detailed.
And completely disconnected from the thing the prospect wanted to hear.
Imagine we go to your favourite restaurant.
We sit down. Menus out. Ready to order.
Then the chef walks out with a whiteboard instead of food.
He wants to explain every step he’ll take to prepare the meal.
You’d either leave or tell him to get back in the kitchen.
You came for dinner.
Not a presentation about dinner.
That’s what happens on a sales call when you lead with the process before you’ve understood the outcome.
What changed for Lori
I gave her a challenge.
Stop explaining what you do.
Start making it clear what they get.
Three things:
-
Find out what they want.
-
Help them put a real value on it.
-
Stand behind the outcome you’re offering.
The next day she messaged me:
“Fucking A! It worked!”
She’d focused the conversation on the result.
“You will land your dream job with me.”
Three calls.
Three closes.
$7,500 in one day.
She didn’t redesign her website.
She didn’t invent a new methodology.
She stopped talking about the kitchen and started serving the steak.
Why experienced solopreneurs fall into this trap
When you’ve spent years developing your craft, the process means something to you.
You know why each step matters.
You know how much thought went into it.
So you explain it, hoping the prospect will recognise the quality.
But they don’t have your context.
They have a problem they want solved.
If you’re talking about a content framework while they’re worrying about an empty pipeline, you’re having two different conversations.
Your process can help them believe the result is possible.
But first, they need to understand what the result is.
Otherwise, every extra detail is more work for them to interpret.
Sell the destination before explaining the route
Start with what they want.
Not what you want to tell them.
What would change if the problem were solved?
Why does that matter?
What is the current situation costing them?
Then explain the outcome you can help them achieve.
The process comes in when it answers a useful question:
“How will we get there?”
That’s different from making the process the whole offer.
A career coach sells the move towards the right job.
A consultant sells the improvement the business needs.
A marketer sells the outcome their work is designed to create.
The calls, workshops and documents are how you do the work.
They aren’t the reason someone wants it.
Audit the way you describe your offer
Pull up your LinkedIn headline.
Your outreach messages.
Your sales call notes.
The paragraph on your website that explains what you sell.
Ask one question:
Is this about what I do or what they get?
If it’s mainly what you do, there’s your starting point.
“I’ll work with you on your content strategy” describes an activity.
It doesn’t tell the buyer what the activity is supposed to achieve.
Get specific about the change you deliver.
Then make sure your offer, your sales conversation and your delivery all point towards it.
You don’t need a more impressive explanation.
You need an outcome people can understand.
Your next sales call
Before explaining your programme, find out what the person actually wants.
Help them understand why it matters.
Then make the offer around the result you can credibly help them achieve.
Answer questions about your process when they’re relevant.
But don’t spend the call proving how much you know while the prospect is still trying to work out whether you can help.
They didn’t come to admire the kitchen.
Want help building an outcome-led offer?
Building and selling an offer around a clear outcome is part of what I teach in my free masterclass.
We look at how your niche, offer and LinkedIn conversations work together so you’re not endlessly explaining your expertise to people who can’t see why they should buy it.
If your sales calls are full of detail but short on decisions, start here.
P.S. Before your next call, know what you’re serving. Then stop reading the recipe out loud.
✌️
Moe
0 Comments