Whatever you do, do it well. Avoid sloppy, incomplete work.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve brought on a couple of new customers that we’re particularly proud of, Seattle Children’s Hospital and Providence Health & Services. Both storied healthcare institutions in the Western U.S. have been helping children and vulnerable patient populations for well over 100 years. Both are pioneers in healthcare, consistently looking for better ways to provide innovative solutions and improve the lives of their customers, i.e. the patients and their families.
Neither organization was necessarily looking for a traditional low-code application development platform like OutSystems. However, after talking to them to better understand their challenges and objectives, we knew that OutSystems could help them overachieve on their digital operations and patient goals. It’s really a testament to the breadth of use cases and complex problems that OutSystems solves every day for our customers. The healthcare industry is no exception. In fact, with all of its difficult challenges, it is a perfect fit for a platform and partner like OutSystems.
But SCH and PHS didn’t know that—yet. It was our team’s job to demonstrate that to them. So, how did we do this? That’s where we can apply the “excel rule” in a sales-based context.
It’s hard to give a specific definition of what “excel” means. It’s everyone’s responsibility to adapt to the challenges and realities of their specific job in order to perform optimally, maximize output, and overachieve on their objectives and key results (OKR’s). But from a sales standpoint at a high-level, I think you can look at it as a three-act play. Three major acts, wherein you try to demonstrate excellence in each phase.
The first act is focusing one’s attention and resources in the right places. The right use cases, challenges, and goals within the right opportunities, prospects, and industries. That will provide you with the highest propensity to win and add value. I think that is the first key part for a successful sales team.
Act two for me is all around your sales process and tactics. At OutSystems, we use the Customer Centric Selling methodology, where you need to really listen to the customer to better understand their needs, goals, and objectives to become a trusted advisor and collaborator. The key is to focus on helping them move the needle on key performance indicators (KPIs) that are meaningful to the business, and the individual.
Act three is post-sale and starts with reducing the time it takes from the initial sale to delivering the first value-add app to production. It’s ensuring that the customer is deriving quantifiable business value (QBV) and ROI with your platform and services. If done right, the OutSystems platform can become the defacto way of developing fit-to-purpose digital solutions, as the customer commercializes us across the enterprise. Bottom line, if the customer is successful, then you’re successful.
At the end of the day, excellence is doing your best and figuring out creative ways to solve problems and get the OutSystems platform in the hands of prospects and customers. When you do that, you can achieve incredible outcomes. For example, just this past month we supported two hackathons for two completely different customers. One a commercial real-estate firm, and one a children’s hospital. Both were very successful and will lead to our apps going to production, adding value to each organization.
That’s what I enjoy most about OutSystems—the positive difference it’s making for so many organizations around the world.
