While it’s tempting to assume growth will stay steady, the reality is that our path will rise or fall depending on how we choose to operate.

What causes decline?

Sales trends often dip when teams fall into an entitled mindset — believing the product sells itself or that customers “should” buy because the solution is so technically strong.

This can combine with the engineering super-ego, where technical pride turns into over-explaining, overwhelming, or unintentionally making customers feel inadequate.

Another trap is becoming too entrenched in quick fixes. When we focus only on solving the immediate problem, we miss the wider context and long-term value that customers really need.

So what drives growth instead?

Future success comes from shifting to a more collaborative, value-creating approach. That means:

• Adopting a true partnering mindset

• Co-creating solutions with customers

• Sharing fresh perspectives that help them see new opportunities

• Working as if their success is our success

By stepping back, bringing in broader insights, and working with rather than at our customers, we can move toward a stronger upward trajectory.

One of the simplest ways to judge whether your message is landing is to listen to how customers respond. Their reactions reveal far more than we sometimes realise.

There’s a clear scale of customer response, and each level tells us something different:

1. “Nah…” – No interest
The message isn’t resonating. The customer isn’t engaged, and nothing you’re saying is connecting.

2. “Hmm…” – Not convinced
They’re thinking, but not in the way you want. There’s uncertainty or doubt, and the value isn’t fully clear.

3. “Okay…” – Surface-level agreement
They’re agreeable, but not enthusiastic. This isn’t a sign of commitment — just polite acceptance.

4. “Oh, that’s good.” – You’ve hit the mark
Now they’re interested. They see relevance, and your message is beginning to land in a meaningful way.

5. “Wow!” – Strong impact
This is a high-value reaction. They’re impressed, engaged, and excited by what you’re offering.

6. “Ah…” – True understanding
This is the goal. The moment a customer gives that satisfied “Ah”, you know they genuinely get it.
They see the destination. They understand the reasoning. You’ve helped them make sense of their challenge and the path forward.

This level of clarity and alignment is what sets great sales conversations apart — and it’s where lasting trust begins.

The most powerful reaction a customer can give — that sense of “You get it. You’re the person I want to work with.” — comes from one thing: the level of value we demonstrate.

And importantly, value is never defined by us.
The customer decides what is valuable, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

To understand how to deliver more meaningful value, it helps to think in levels:

The Value Pyramid

1. Cost Savings – The Basic Level
Many sales conversations start here: “We can save you money.”
It’s generic, unexciting, and often reduces the discussion to pricing.
Useful? Yes. Differentiating? Not really.

2. Efficiency – Doing Things Right
Saving time or being more efficient is appealing, but still limited.
It answers how things can be done faster, not whether they’re the right things to do.

3. Effectiveness – Doing the Right Things
This is where value becomes more meaningful.
Helping a customer make better decisions, prioritise correctly, or choose the right path is far more impactful than simply making the current path quicker.

4. Competitive Advantage – Real Strategic Value
At the top of the pyramid is true differentiation.
What if your solution helps the customer stand out in their market?
What if it strengthens their positioning, performance, or reputation?
This is where the “Ah…” moment happens — where your value is recognised at a strategic, long-term level.

Who Should We Be Talking To?

The value pyramid doesn’t just shape our message — it shapes our audience.

• Discussions about cost savings often stay with people focused on spreadsheets and budgets.

• But conversations about effectiveness and competitive advantage belong with senior leaders, the people responsible for strategy and growth.

If your offer genuinely delivers top-tier value, the conversation belongs at the top of the organisation.

This clarity helps you position your message where it matters most — and create deeper, more meaningful customer engagement.

Most sales teams focus heavily on their sales process — what they should do, what steps to follow, what actions to take.

But the real key to effective selling is much simpler:
align with what the customer is already doing.

Customers follow a natural buying journey, and the more we understand it, the more intelligently we can position our message.

The Customer’s Buying Journey (Simplified)

1. A Trigger Occurs
Something changes — a problem arises, a new opportunity appears, an external event impacts the organisation. This creates a need and sparks the thought: “We have to do something.”

2. They Explore How to Solve It
Customers begin shaping their own ideas of what a solution might look like. Today, they do more of this independently than ever.

3. They Define Their Requirements
They start to “spec up” the solution — creating their own internal shopping list. This forms the basis of what they'll later ask the market for.

4. They Go to Market
This is the stage sellers often get excited about: the tender, the enquiry, the brief. But by this point, customers have already made many decisions without us.

5. They Negotiate, Buy, and Implement
The focus now is on selecting a supplier, agreeing terms, and putting the solution into action — all driven by the results they wanted from the very first trigger.

Customers Buy Outcomes

Every stage of the buying process is aimed at achieving a specific result.
If we understand the outcome they want, we can have far more relevant and strategic conversations.

This means focusing less on what we sell and more on what they achieve.

How This Shapes an Effective Sales Approach

Great selling ultimately comes down to five things:

• The right opportunities

• The right research

• The right conversations

• The right solutions

• Delivering the right outcomes

When we map our actions to the customer’s buying journey, everything becomes clearer:

• Who we should talk to

• What message we should take

• When we should engage

• How we can influence the process before decisions are locked in

Understanding their process allows us to sell smarter, earlier, and with far more impact.

When we map the customer’s buying journey, it becomes clear that different levels of the organisation become involved at different stages. This has a major impact on how — and when — we should engage.

At the very top of the organisation, senior leaders are the ones who usually experience the initial trigger.
A change in the market, a new opportunity, or an emerging threat often starts at a strategic level.

This is where initiatives begin.

Senior leaders set the direction and launch initiatives to explore how the organisation should respond. These initiatives are then passed down to operational teams to investigate, scope, and shape into practical solutions.

Once operational teams have explored options and drafted solution requirements, the information travels back up the hierarchy for approval:

• Senior leaders validate the approach

• Budgets are authorised

• The organisation decides to move forward

Only then does the process drop back down to operational teams to manage tenders, RFPs and supplier engagement — the point where many sellers first get involved.

But by that stage, the majority of decisions have already been made.

Different People, Different Stages

This movement between senior and operational levels means multiple stakeholders are involved across the buying journey:

• Senior leaders initiate the need and approve direction

• Operational teams shape requirements and run the purchasing process

• Decision-makers sign off solutions based on both strategic fit and practical detail

Understanding who is involved at each phase helps you tailor your message, engage earlier, and stay aligned with what the customer is really trying to achieve.

Aligning Your Sales Process With Their Buying Process

The core principle is simple:
Your sales framework should follow — not fight — the customer’s natural process.

When you map your conversations, messaging, and actions to what the customer is doing at each stage, engagement becomes smoother, earlier, and far more effective.

And the best part?
This alignment is absolutely achievable — once you know what to look for.

 Everything we’ve covered so far feeds directly into the framework behind the Collaborative Selling Accelerator — a 90-day programme built around the five essentials of effective selling:

• Right Opportunities

• Right Research

• Right Conversations

• Right Solutions

• Right Outcomes

The Accelerator gives you the tools, structure, and rhythm to put the right actions in place at the right time. But more importantly, it’s designed to be applied in real life, with real customers, on real sales opportunities.

This isn’t theoretical learning.
It’s hands-on, practical, and aligned to the conversations you’re already having.

By the end of the 90 days, you’re not just learning a new approach — you’re seeing the results of it. Because when you focus on outcomes, the activity inside the programme naturally turns into commercial impact.

That’s why the Accelerator consistently pays for itself.
With the right opportunities, the return on investment becomes clear — which is also why we can confidently offer guarantees, flexible payment plans, and investment options that suit your organisation.

If you’ve reached this point, it’s almost certainly because you’re the kind of company this programme is designed for — thoughtful, intentional, and focused on sustainable sales success.

If you’d like to explore what this could look like for your team, simply use the link below to book a conversation. We’ll talk through how to apply the model in your organisation and how it can support the outcomes you’re aiming for.

After all… I have to practise what I preach.

Lets talk guarantees!

What Drives Sales Success Today

The future of sales won’t stay flat.
If we’re not careful, performance trends downward — usually because of one of three traps:

• Entitled approach – assuming the product sells itself

• Engineering super-ego – overwhelming customers with technical superiority

• Entrenched thinking – focusing only on quick fixes

But the good news: we can turn that into an uptick by shifting how we work.

Success comes from:

• Thinking collaboratively

• Acting like a partner

• Bringing a new perspective that customers truly value

How We Know When It’s Working

Customers tell us — not with metrics, but with reactions:

• “Nah.” – Not relevant

• “Hmm.” – Not convinced

• “Okay.” – Polite, but not meaningful

• “Good.” – You’re hitting the mark

• “Wow.” – Strong impact

• “Ah…” – Deep understanding, clarity, and trust

That “Ah…” is the moment that matters.

The Levels of Value We Bring

Value determines how customers respond — and who we should be speaking to.

1. Cost Savings
2. Efficiency (doing things right)
3. Effectiveness (doing the right things)
4. Competitive Advantage (the highest level)

The higher the value, the higher the level of the organisation we engage.

Aligning With the Customer’s Buying Journey

Customers don’t wait for us to show up.
Their process starts long before tenders and RFPs:

1. A trigger creates a need

2. They define the problem

3. They shape their own solution

4. They set criteria

5. Then they go to tender

6. Decision and implementation follow

By the time the salesperson thinks, “They love us — they want to talk!”, most of the real work has already happened.

This is why we sell backwards and upwards:

• Backwards into the earlier stages of thinking

• Upwards to the senior people who feel the initial trigger

When we align our approach with their process, engagement becomes far more effective.

The Five Essentials of Effective Selling

Everything ultimately comes back to:

• Right opportunities

• Right research

• Right conversations

• Right solutions

• Right outcomes

Customers buy outcomes — and that’s where our approach begins.

When we train salespeople to focus on these five areas, they consistently take the right actions at the right time, which drives stronger results throughout the sales process.

And that is why we can guarantee results!

Full video

A complete engineering sales strategy in 12 minutes