THE Sales Question: “What Does Success Look Like to You?”

Most of my sales work involves a productized service: the SQL Critical Care®, a package of consulting work with a defined set of steps and a finish line.

But sometimes on introductory calls, prospective customers just start venting.

They complain about performance, management, capacity planning, architecture, upgrades, downtime, cost, staffing, the last guy, and a litany of stuff.

As a consultant, though, I can’t write a Statement of Work for that. Or to be more specific, I can’t write it up in a way that an executive will actually sign the contract to let us start work.

So when I’m not sure where things are going, here’s what I say:

What does success look like to you? At the end of the gig, I want you to be able to say, “Thank goodness we called them because they were finally able to ____.” What’s in that blank?

The answer helps us all:

• Understand what the first project’s finish line looks like (not necessarily the end of our entire working relationship, just the first finish line that we need to cross together)
• Understand if I can help them cross that line (because sometimes it’s not a good fit for me)
• Set things out of scope when they’re not related to the finish line (it doesn’t mean we’re never going to do that work – it’s just not part of this first race we’re running together)

If you don’t have a productized service yet – or even if you’re just applying for a full time job – success is so much easier when you understand what success means to the other person.