How to sell software products to businesses?

Move from output to outcome messaging

What is the best way to get customers to the point where they sign-up and try your product? In other words, what is the most effective messaging? Too many software providers sell features instead of value. They should move from output messaging to outcome messaging. Output messaging explains your product … when you use the product (input) you get this output. For example, when you use my search engine, you find more relevant results. In contrast, outcome messaging is focused on the business value (outcome) of the product. When you use my search engine, your knowledge will be used to reduce decision-making risks at scale. When you sell outcome, the output is the reason to believe (RTB). So in the search example, knowledge will be used to reduce decision risks at scale because my product delivers more relevant results then any other offering.

Companies are very good at describing the output of the product because the output is the motivation for the features they are building. (For example, a great AI feature that creates amazing search relevance). However, leaving the value narrative to the buyer prohibits premium pricing, makes your product easier to copy, provides less opportunities for add-on services and most of all, does not enable ROI selling.

Ask yourself a simple question

So how can you start building outcome based messaging? Ask yourself the following question: how will my customer champion explain my product to her CFO? This simple question is often the best trigger to change from output to outcome messaging. The closer your product champion (the person you sell to) is to the user of your product, the easier it is for the champion to understand output messaging. But most likely, they are part of a buying center and must communicate the value internally to win your budget against competing projects. They need an outcome message to secure your budget! The outcome message makes sense for “user” buyers too, because the message reassures them that buying the product will generate business impact. So outcome based messaging activates buyers.

Test if your message is outcome based

So how can you test whether your messaging is outcome based? Does your message argue top-line or bottom-line impact of your product? Many businesses believe they sell outcome but can't estimate the impact their product will have. That means their messaging framework is not outcome based. If you don’t know how to estimate the outcome, you can’t communicate it. So let’s go back to our outcome message example. When using my search engine your organization will use knowledge in decision-making at scale. Using this knowledge will reduce decision risk e.g. in marketing spending decisions or product engineering decisions. We can calculate the outcome by defining the decision risk reduction. This is equivalent to the decision investment multiplied by the increased decision confidence by using the existing knowledge delivered from the search engine.

Knowing the outcome formula for your product and embedding it in the value message framework provides your software business with a winning sales playbook. It‘s worth the effort … move from output to outcome messaging to generate more leads and beat your competition. Try it, it works.