HITT- Exploring AI Opportunities Through Outcome-based Selling- June 10, 2025

In a recent HITT, Telarus VP of CX, Sam Nelson, discussed the importance of outcome-based selling in the context of AI opportunities. He emphasized that decision makers are increasingly focused on measurable business outcomes rather than just features and capabilities. By understanding buyer goals and metrics, advisors can position themselves as indispensable business coaches and technology advisers. The conversation highlighted the need to map AI solutions to actual business priorities, ensuring that they address specific problems and deliver tangible results. Ultimately, the session underscored that AI’s success hinges on its ability to create meaningful impact for businesses.

Transcript is auto-generated.

Introduction to High Intensity Tech Training

Alright. It is time for today’s High Intensity Tech Training, and as always, your comments and questions are welcome in the chat window for live q and a both during and after the presentation.

Today, we welcome back Telarus VP of CX, Sam Nelson, originator of the popular minute snippet feature on LinkedIn, and she of the I will amaze you lightboard presentation fame.

Today, we are talking AI opportunities and the important data coming back indicating decision makers are not looking for algorithms.

They want results and advisors who lead with business outcomes rather than just technical features. Well, they’re winning more AI conversations. They’re closing bigger deals. So today, we discuss outcome based selling with Sam Nelson. Sam, welcome back to the Tuesday call. How are you?

I am great, Doug, especially now that I’m on the Tuesday call.

So way to start the day for me. Yep. I’m on Pacific time. It’s about eight AM. I cannot wait to get rolling into this session. I know a lot of folks here have been anticipating this topic.

In fact, many of you on the call have asked for something like this. So I’m super excited to just get into it. What do you think, Doug? Should we roll?

Let’s do it. We’ll keep an eye on some of the questions in the chat. We’ll have a few at the, end of it. In the meantime, I can’t wait to see what you have for us.

Amazing. Okay. Alright, Chandler. Go ahead and pin me. Perfect. It’s like on cue. I don’t even need to remind anybody anymore.

Alright. So, first things first. I’m just gonna let you all know, Megan and Mikey b, me, we’re all super excited for this topic, but those two are traveling. So, they will not be lighting up the chat and stirring anything up today.

However, I still want you guys to light up the chat. In true Sam fashion, I’m gonna look at the chat. I’m gonna answer stuff as I go. Please feel free to interrupt me.

Like, you guys know the drill. Every Tuesday call I’m on, I love to keep it super dynamic, because I think this topic is insanely popular, especially right now because we want to capture what we can while we’re in this sort of AI era or at the start of it or in the thick of it, actually.

Outcome-Based Selling in AI

So that said, today’s session is on leading with outcomes and how to sell AI by solving what for what matters most.

It is so, so, so important to step away from just talk about capabilities and features. Like, guys, we should probably start asking what matters most to the buyers that we’re speaking to. Right? So we’re gonna dive right in.

But before I do, again, in true Sam fashion, I wanna get to know you. How familiar are you with outcome based selling? You put ones in the chat, twos in the chat, threes in the chat. I mean, are you familiar?

You know, a little bit. You wanna learn more. I’m a rock star. I do this already.

Yep. Okay. Forest chiming in with the three. I like it. Setting the bar there. Very cool.

Ones, twos, know a little bit. Alright. No. This is oh, rock star. I love it.

Excellent. Three of Kyle. Three of course.

Alright.

So amazing. So at least we know the technology is working. Right? Because y’all are coming in.

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Alright. So this is good to know that some of you are maybe not as familiar at all.

Some of you know a little bit. Maybe you’re, you know, working toward implementing outcome based selling a little more as the industry is changing. We have to change the way that we sell, and we also have to differentiate by the way that we sell, especially in this world of AI. K?

So, I’m gonna ask a huge favor from from Doug and Chandler. Just FYI, if you could just watch the chat. If I miss any questions, please take that down for it. Don’t do check without the acronyms, OBS, outcome, base, selling.

Understanding Outcome-Based Selling

You know it. Alright. Here we go. So today’s agenda, we’re gonna talk about why it matters.

We’re gonna talk about the shift to outcome based selling, the AI sales trap we’ve all encountered, even if you didn’t realize that you’ve encountered it. You’ve encountered it. Alright. Business drivers, discovery questions, soft tracks, use case, mistakes to avoid.

Like, we’re just gonna give you all of the good things so that you could go out and start having those AI conversations if you’re not already, or maybe even revisiting some of those conversations that you had previously, but just changing the approach. Okay? So hear me out.

Alright. You know, I love to start with story time. Now I’m not gonna write anything on the board. You’re not gonna see me clean the window today.

But I just wanna start out with something that I hear on a daily basis. K? So the question is, who does AI the best right now and who do you recommend? So story time, everyone’s favorite. So when you see this or when you think about asking this question, I want you to remember the space.

Okay? So if you need to take a screenshot of that, do that. But, again, remember the space because this question cannot be answered without knowing what the outcomes are for the buyer. Alright?

So when you ask me, okay. Who do who who’s doing AI really good right now? Who’s doing it, you know, this way or that way? Folks, guess what?

There’s a lot of things that AI does, and you cannot go to your big box sale you know, big box store and go buy a box of AI and inspect and and and, expect to just plug it in somewhere. That’s not how it works. Right? You have to know that AI is something you have to completely tailor to a customer’s goals, their needs, and what’s gonna make them successful.

Alright? So again, don’t forget the face to think about it before you ask this kind of question. Alright. And that goes to anybody, any one of us.

Right? We’re just gonna the first question back to you is gonna be cool. What is it that your your customer is looking to achieve? What are the outcomes that they’re looking to meet?

Right? So that’s my story time for today, folks. Take that in. Alright?

Let’s go in and talk about why this matters today. And I did put the sources down here, so I’m not just kinda making these up. We know all stats are, like, what, ninety percent of them are made up. But these are pretty interesting.

The Importance of AI Spending

So why it matters? Look. AI spending is gonna reach five hundred billion dollars globally in twenty twenty five. So, folks, you are right in the thick of it.

And, yes, thank you, Matt. No goals, no sale. Exactly. It’s what we’re gonna do today.

But AI spending is massive. Right? And how do we take advantage of that? Clearly, the opportunity is there, and so we need to take the lead in a lot of these conversations to get things rolling.

But here’s another interesting fact. Seventy four percent of b to b buyers want sellers to focus more on the outcomes than the product capabilities.

So this isn’t just us trying to con you know, just saying, hey. You need to switch to outcome based selling. This is the buyer saying, hey. Can you focus on me and not just what a product does?

Guys, this is the difference between a technology adviser and a supplier right here. Right? A supplier is going to talk about what it is that their product does. Right?

You, as a technology adviser, you’re gonna talk about outcomes versus what the products do because that’s what the suppliers do, and let them do that. They do a great job at that. Right? But you have to focus on, okay, what is the benefit to the organization and how does it fit into the overall goals for that particular decision maker or buyer?

K? And last but certainly not least, proof’s in the pudding, folks. Fifty nine percent of buyers actually say that vendors don’t or do not understand their business well enough. They don’t.

Okay? And these are surveys done by IDC, Gartner, Forrester. Like, you could pull all of this data off off of those reports. Okay?

But fifty nine percent of buyers say the suppliers do not understand the business well enough. K? Because, essentially, the supplier does x y z things, and so they’re gonna sell x y z things. But you, as a technology adviser, you have the ability to talk about anything you want, right, and really dial it in, from a goals perspective.

So we’re gonna kinda teach you how to do that today.

Defining Outcome-Based Selling

Alright. OBS, outcome based selling. What in the world is it? It’s selling based on measurable impact.

Measurable impact. Measurable goals. It’s not just selling features. And it is so, so, so crucial for AI right now where a lot of the solutions out there these days are pretty abstract.

Right?

Everybody says that they have an AI powered something. If I got a penny for every time I I heard or saw the word AI powered, I’d be super rich. Right? AI powered AI powered everything.

And it is so abstract because so many of these suppliers do a lot of great things regarding AI, but all in different ways. Right? All in different ways. And so what outcome based selling actually does is it moves the buyer focus.

Someone mentioned ROI. Yes. Chris, you mentioned Christopher, you mentioned the need to show ROI. Right?

This concept, this way of selling, it moves this buyer focus to ROI. Right? ROI, time savings, customer metrics. Right?

And guess what? All of those things are what gets the budget to invest in technology and other things for the business. And so if you’re tying your conversations to these components specifically and what gets them paid and also what makes the the company money, right, they’re more willing to invest in solutions.

Right?

So, yes, we’re lighting up the chat. This is fantastic. So I’m gonna talk a little bit about the AI sales trap. K?

Avoiding the AI Sales Trap

We see this time and time again, time and time again. Right? Where people will say or or suppliers even will say, yeah. We can use you know, we use NLP, GenAI, ML, natural language processing, generative AI, machine learning to power proactive chatbots.

Like, okay. That’s cool. Right?

It’s a lot of jargon. It it makes it sound fancy, and, you know, it’s unfortunately, it’s a trap because what you’re talking about here are are the features, the capabilities.

So try to avoid leading with what it can do, rather talk about, right, the outcomes that are most important to the business because that’s gonna capture and and actually anchor the conversation throughout. It’s gonna it’s gonna start with a solid foundation, and then you can kinda start talking about the possibilities.

Right? But buyers like it says here, they don’t want AI just for AI’s sake. Right? Yeah. They’re doing a lot of research, but at the end of the day, they’re looking for AI to solve certain things.

And the truth is some of them don’t know what those certain things are. So that’s why it’s so important that you have these conversations around possible outcomes.

Think of how well this solidifies you in a sales cycle for ongoing business. If you are helping even helping the customer define what these KPIs should be or what these outcomes could potentially look like and they agree to it, you have literally solidified practically a board seat, right, at that company because you’re helping this customer meet these outcomes. Technology changes all the time. Right?

It changes all the time. And so they can always have a new solution helping them meet new outcomes, but you are there helping them create the outcomes and meet them. Right? So you are solidifying your seat at the table for life.

So, again, they don’t want AI for AI’s sake. They want outcomes. Here are some examples, things like fewer support tickets, faster onboarding, lower churn, more productivity.

That is one of the number one reasons why companies are implementing artificial intelligence today is to increase overall productivity, not necessarily to replace humans. And then, of course, better customer satisfaction. Those are just some examples. Okay?

Mapping AI to Business Priorities

I’ll give you more. Don’t worry. But the goal here is to map AI to actual business priorities. So we can use them interchangeably.

Priorities, outcomes, KPIs, things of that nature. So here are some four points, of just examples of different priorities and then mapping AI to those priorities. So first one would be as it pertains to customer experience. Right? Because that’s that’s selfishly my swim lane. The first one would be reducing call volume.

Right? So okay. What’s that’s the overarching goal, then what are some solves for that? Right?

You see where I’m going here? Is that something like AI automation self-service capabilities can help reduce the call volume, right, which then frees up people to take on more complex tasks. Right? Like, you see where I’m going here.

It’s like a ladder. Right? Another one, boosting containment. Right?

Reducing churn, AI enhanced IVR and chat. If we can, like, say, we can enable customers, right, to, not just figure out what it is that they want on their own without having to talk to an agent, but also if they’re able to interact with a chatbot that knows, right, that person’s preferences, that’s so powerful. Right? And it being able to just adjust to their preferences and, make it a really cool experience just for that person.

Improving productivity, this is a hot one right now. Actually, I should probably should have put this one at the top. But AI, yeah, does have capabilities around summarization, coaching, right, even coaching people, and providing kinda next best actions based on a customer’s profile or even the way that a conversation is going. It’s pretty incredible, all the different productivity tools out there. But you also have to consider, okay, you want to customer, you want to improve productivity.

Tell me how you’re doing that today. Right? Ask more questions. Find out exactly what they’re doing to solve for this priority before you start feeding them with different capabilities and features because it’s gonna go down a rabbit hole real quick that you probably don’t wanna go down.

And I know that a lot of you are a little worried there. Right? It can be kinda scary going down this conversation path. The reality is you have to have them, but even more importantly, gotta know when to pivot.

Right? So you start going down this rabbit hole and you’re like, great. Let’s schedule more time to really go in-depth on this stuff because clearly, this is really important to you. So what I wanna do is bring on even more resources to another call or another meeting so we can go even more in-depth.

How does that sound? Would you be against meeting with me on this day at this time? Right? Boom.

There’s your close after the first call. And then the last one would be driving loyalty.

Right? So personalization.

There’s a lot of personalization capabilities out there. I’m just looking at the chat, but, yes, stop building AI use cases, start building AI user use cases. A hundred percent.

You really want to dial it down to what are these different roles or people in organization are doing, and then how exactly AI is going to supplement their role. Alright?

Sam, this is Doug. I’m holding on questions a little bit, but Ron’s got a comment here that I also wanted to add to your list there. I think it’s terrific and so many companies are going through it. Allowing companies the ability to scale by redeploying resources to meet growth demand. AI figures huge in that.

Yes. Absolutely.

A hundred percent. There are so many things that AI can do to assist with scale. It’s pretty unbelievable. And not just from, like, a human resource standpoint, but just consider all of the data coming in and going out.

AI can actually really help, sort of not just organize that, but maintain hygiene, right, and just make it super consumable and give companies the ability to use data as their superpower, essentially. Right? So I love that comment. Thank you for throwing that in, Doug. I appreciate it.

Implementing Effective AI Solutions

Alright. So how do we do this? Sam, break it down for me. Right? You’ve given me some examples.

How do we do this? So it’s three things. This is what it’s made up of. One, the outcome.

What do they want? Two, the impact. Why does it matter? And three, the solution.

How does AI help in this situation? Alright?

Cool. Let me give you some examples because I know that’s where we’re going with this.

K. In the discovery, what you want to do is start asking about the goals, ask about metrics, ask about KPIs. Essentially, how does this person keep their job? How does this person make money? How do they grow in their role, and how do they help the organization operate or grow?

Take anyone in the revenue organization, anybody.

I mean, if you ask even our CRO. Right? You know, hey. You know, what are your key drivers?

Well, to grow revenue. Or if I told you something, you know, in AI or there’s a possibility that something like AI can help you grow revenue by ten x. Well, gosh. Now you’ve got my now you’ve got my ear.

Right? So make it relatable, but find out essentially what makes them tick. Because when you figure it out, you, right here, you become indispensable.

You really do. You become indispensable.

Folks, if you are dialing in on what makes them tick and what matters most of these folks, who would not want essentially a coach? That’s kind of what you’re becoming. Right? In this AI era, you’re becoming a coach.

A good question in the chat around how can we use AI to help us with this. Oh, I love this one. I have a fantastic prompt for y’all, that I will look up later and either pop in the chat or I’ll send it as a follow-up email. But what it will do is it will basically put you in the frame of mind of this potential buyer at x company, and it will help you determine what their potential goals, metrics, KPIs are and arm you with that information and insights before you go into that conversation with the buyer.

Yes. Gold star. Gold star for John. That’s a great one.

Now really, really neat here is that, yeah, you become, like, the the business coach for this person along with the technology adviser. You’re an adviser. Right? And so become the coach, help them work through these goals, metrics, KPIs over the next year. You’ve already solidified yourself at the seats. Right?

Alright. So here we go.

Introducing the Mapping Template

This is the screenshot slide. So I’m gonna step away like the the weather person here. It’s called a mapping template. This is one of my favorites.

Okay? And I will send out a mapping template, to all of you as well with these boxes. Just know that this is CX specific because, a lot of the lowest hanging fruit is in CX. They’re most relatable.

They’re, very easily kind of implemented on top of what they’re what they’re using today, and it’s just very, very relevant right now.

So we’ve broken it down here into, okay, outcome impact metric and then the potential solution, how does AI help. Right? And so, first one, like, let’s just take, okay. Let’s take the the first one, reducing call volume.

Right? That’s what they want is to, like, get that call volume under control because there’s just so much of it, whether that’s call volume or chat volume or whatever it is. Right? The impact, why it matters, support people are expensive.

Right? Long wait times, people are getting pissed. They’re having to either get a callback.

Whenever I hear anything over, like, you know, your your wait time is two minutes. If I hear anything over a minute, I’m like, yeah. I’ll call back later. Right? Or you can call me back sometime.

The metrics okay. Here are the metrics. Folks, like, this is this is gold right here. It’s take down these metrics. Kinda done the homework for you a bit as they relate to these outcomes. But things like calls per day, average handle time, CSAT, like, those metrics are what measure essentially these outcomes.

Right?

And so things like AI virtual assistants. Right?

Agentic right? Agentic AI, like, agents virtual agents can help with that as far as an AI powered solution. There you go. Your first AI powered phrase for the day. Penny to all of you. Right?

We let’s see. Let’s go down the list here. Oh, retain more customers. I like this one.

This is a really good one because we all know that it’s more expensive to have to acquire a new one versus retain, a, an existing customer. So impact are things like high churn. Right? Expensive to replace, like I mentioned.

And how are they measuring customer attention? Well, okay. They do have retention rates, so they do measure churn. Right?

Net promoter score, renewal rates. Right? But then you’ve got AI powered solutions that potentially help with churn prediction.

So if they’re looking if AI is have they. If AI is looking at all the data and then it’s saying, hey.

I’ve noticed it’s noticing patterns with specific customer data saying, oh, these customers will most likely churn in this amount of time based on all this historical data that it’s processing. It would take ages for a human to do that manually. Could you imagine?

Right? And so something like AI can do that for you and actually not just predict maybe which customers are at risk, but it can even proactively maybe outreach to those customers on your behalf. Right? On the custom on the business’s behalf.

So it really doesn’t require that much hand holding. It’s maybe to a point at which the AI says, okay. This customer wants to have a conversation because we proactively reached out to them. Now get them on the phone, and that’s a high value conversation that someone, you know, could, like, a a a maybe, a customer retention specialist can have with them.

Right?

Another one of my favorites, I promise I’ll move on. Like, I’m getting a lot of love from this slide right now in the chat, so we’re just gonna keep rolling on this.

But the boost online conversation, I like this one a lot. So, when people are visiting websites, there’s not a lot of visibility there. Right? And so, because the customer’s kinda on their own. There’s not someone, like, watching their screen and and write what they’re doing.

But drop offs. Drop offs are big. Think about, like, part abandonment.

Think about, you know, people are in a chat and then they just leave. Rude. Right?

Things like that. And so when we look at the impact of these drop offs, it’s pretty significant.

Right? And so the metrics here are things like conversion rates. Like, yes, they went online, but, like, how many of those actually converted into a sale, right, of a product or service?

So consider something AI powered like a chatbot that’s gonna give that customer recommendations. It’s gonna kind of follow someone around on the website. If anyone has been to Nordstrom, you know, like, people follow you around and they see if you need a a fitting room, like, all the time. Right?

That’s kind of what AI can do is sort of be that personal shopper, on, online, which is pretty neat. Lot of capabilities there, folks. I’m telling you it’s it’s wild.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in AI Sales

So anyhow, this is kind of the money slide for y’all. I will send it out, so don’t worry if you missed it, and no worries if you’re mobile. Alright. Mistakes to avoid. Oh my gosh. My favorite. Mistakes to avoid.

K. Folks, number one, do not jump into demos or technology too fast. Okay? Don’t say, hey.

Yeah. This like, I know we all get excited about AI, and I’m sure, like, you’re having the conversation with the customer and they’re like, yeah. I wanna see it. I wanna see it.

And you guys think, okay. Slow down. Right? Slow down.

Don’t jump into demos or the technology to that. Take the time to really understand what those business outcomes are and how they are measured. Okay? How they are measured.

Because if you don’t fully understand all that, when the conversation at any point in the sales cycle starts to go sideways, k, when it starts to go sideways, you need to be able to go back to say, hey, customer, we talked about this. Your KPI was this to meet this outcome. How has the KPI changed all of a sudden? Right?

What you need to be able to bring them back to the key focus, which is what gets them paid and what makes them tick. Right? So don’t jump too fast into this. Alright?

Don’t use generic ROI claims. Yeah. You can, you know I’ve seen customers experience up to seventy percent savings, up to fifty percent saving. Folks, the more specific you can get around a customer’s business, the better.

And there was a lot of talk in the chat about specific ROI, to, you know, key performance indicators for a business, which, again, is why you need to understand those KPIs and how they’re measured, what those calculations look like. Because if you’re in it with them again, you’re like a coach. Right? So you need to go in there and really understand how they’re measured so you can actually get specific on these ROI calculations with them.

And, yes, suppliers do have the resources to help you with that. Right? The last thing, please connect to the buyer’s role specific KPIs throughout. Right?

Like, at this point, if you haven’t done that, then this is not the outcome based selling approach.

Make sure that, again, you’re understanding the KPIs. And, there’s a question on examples of measured outcomes. It was on the previous slide if you missed it, but we could certainly send some more, and I’m sure there are some suppliers on here as well who’d be willing to send that out to the group too. K?

The Importance of Business Impact Over AI Features

Awesome. So, folks, here’s the bottom line. Okay? Bottom line, AI does not sell itself. As much as the websites look really cool, the demos look really neat, it’s not gonna sell itself.

But what does is business impact. I’m gonna say it again. AI does not sell itself. Business impact does at the end of the day.

Right? Business impact does. So make sure that you are understanding the business drivers to be able to sell more artificial intelligence today, to be able to have more of those AI conversations today.

Because if you’re able to tie them back to the business drivers, again, you’ve solidified your value, with with that customer, and you basically taken your seat at the table.

So with that said, next steps, all good. You guys know these next steps from last time as well. But engage the team. Engage us.

Next Steps for Engaging Clients

We’re more than happy to hop on calls with clients. We do these all the time daily. Get to know key suppliers in this space. Don’t ask me again, don’t ask me who does AI the best.

Okay? Alright.

Again Make the face, Sam.

Yeah. I’m gonna make the face.

Okay. Stay up to date on the latest trends news because, folks, this stuff is happening so so quickly.

Super important to, stay on top of it. So I’m gonna stop there because I know we are on a time line. But Doug, did I miss anything? What did I miss in the chat? I feel so bad.

Just one or two things I wanna make sure we bring up. There were some outstanding comments in the chat, but everybody seemed to be fascinated with your comments about, you know, don’t go right into the demos. Find out what it is that we want to be able to demo. Find out what the client’s exact needs are and where it is that you’re trying to go. What are those outcomes and then develop the demos or the presentation to that. You get a lot of feedback on that. How long should that discovery process last, and is it different if you’re dealing with the IT team versus the c level team?

The Discovery Process: Tailoring to Different Teams

Oh, yes. That I’m so glad you brought this up. Thank you. So, folks, discovery is going to take as long as it needs to. And I know we all want to close business faster, but the reality is if you’re doing discovery the right way and you’re taking your time to do it and really understand the business, that’s gonna be your saving grace anytime a deal potentially goes sideways. And, yes, you’re right in that all these discovery sessions are gonna look so different between an IT team versus the revenue team versus the marketing team, even operations.

It’s gonna look so different. I’ve been in a room where there’s a c level or a VP level of someone from two or three different departments, and that conversation is difficult to have because, one, they all want something selfishly for themselves.

But, two, they all have completely different KPIs across the business. So sometimes having those conversations separately before you get everyone in a room can be a good idea because then you get that one on one time.

But, also, the more the more sticky you can be, the more kind of decision makers, contacts, right, you can have within a business, always a strong approach to have those discovery, discovery calls with them to just find out what makes them tick. At the end of the day, it’s what makes them tick.

A number of the advisers on the call seem to resonate with the phrase, you become indispensable. This whole exercise seems to be designed to find what the client’s actual needs are, how AI can benefit them, but also what a phenomenal and strong position that puts our advisors in, not only for the present opportunity, but for future opportunities as well because they understand not only the AI, but where the customer needs to take it.

Navigating AI Limitations and Client Needs

Exactly. And guess what? AI is not perfect.

So in a situation where, you know, you’ve led with AI and and you’ve led with the features and you’ve led with the capabilities, it puts you in a really awkward position if that solution does not work out. But if you are starting with the outcome and you’re saying, hey. Okay. We’re gonna evaluate x y z supplier to meet these outcomes because this is what’s important to you.

I know your business. If any of those don’t work out, great. Customer’s gonna say, cool. You understand my business.

You know what makes me tick. Go find something else. You see the difference in approach there. It really does make you become indispensable because you are at the heart of the business versus here are the solutions that potentially complement the business.

Conclusion and Future Engagement

Phenomenal discussion. I I really do have to run earlier today. We’ve got a number of presentations going on, but this has been such a phenomenal presentation. And, Sam, you’re gonna hang around a little bit to field additional questions and comments in the chat. Right?

Absolutely. I’m gonna be here. But, yes, let’s head off to the next thing, Doug. Appreciate it.