EP. 259: Results Tell You What Happened, Capabilities Tell You Why - Truth #22

Results Can Lie About Effectiveness

Early in Tom Stanfill's sales career, he worked in the mortgage industry and, like most sellers, judged himself by what he closed. Then interest rates dropped dramatically and business increased.

Tom looked more successful, but part of that success had nothing to do with whether he had suddenly become better at selling. The market had changed in his favor. The same thing can happen when a seller inherits a strong territory, represents a uniquely strong product, or sells into a category experiencing unusually high demand.

The result is real, but it may not accurately measure the seller's effectiveness.

That distinction matters because leaders often use results as the diagnosis. A seller misses quota, so something must be wrong with the seller. Another seller exceeds quota, so they must be doing everything right. Neither conclusion is necessarily true.

Results should tell leaders where to look. Capabilities help them understand what is actually happening.

Productivity Isn't Effectiveness Either

Tab Norris saw the opposite problem early in his career. His managers were intensely focused on activity: how many calls did you make, did you follow the process, did you complete the required activity?

Tab did. And his managers told him he was doing great.

The problem was that Tab could see other sellers producing much more. He didn't just want confirmation that he was working hard. He wanted to understand how to get better.

That exposes another important distinction. Productivity matters. A seller can have extraordinary ability and still fail if they do not do the work. But productivity measures discipline and work ethic. It does not necessarily measure effectiveness.

Someone can execute every required activity and still struggle because they lack an important sales capability. That is where coaching needs to go next.

What Is a Sales Capability?

The language around capabilities can get confusing. Sales organizations talk about skills, competencies, techniques, behaviors, disciplines, and best practices, often interchangeably.

ASLAN defines a capability more simply: it is an ability that produces a measurable outcome.

Tom uses a tennis serve to illustrate the difference. The capability is serving the ball successfully. Many disciplines contribute to that outcome, including the toss, stance, swing, timing, and technique. But the ultimate test of the capability is straightforward: did the ball land in the box?

That outcome gives the player and coach a starting point. If the serve is consistently successful, there may be no effectiveness problem to solve. If not, the coach and player can examine the specific disciplines causing the gap.

Sales should work the same way.

Start With the Customer Outcome

Consider discovery. A manager could evaluate the seller by asking whether they used open-ended questions, listened well, followed up, or used the discovery framework correctly. Those may all be important disciplines.

But ASLAN starts one level higher: Did the customer reveal the information you needed?

Suppose there are eight things the seller needs to understand before making a recommendation. If the conversation ends and the customer has revealed those eight things, the seller achieved the discovery outcome. If the customer only revealed three, there is a capability gap to explore.

Now the manager can ask why. Maybe the seller did not ask strong follow-up questions. Maybe they moved too quickly. Maybe they failed to create enough receptivity for the customer to open up. Maybe time ran out.

The outcome identifies the gap. The coaching conversation identifies the discipline that caused it.

ASLAN's Four One-to-One Sales Capabilities

ASLAN organizes the fundamental one-to-one selling conversation around four capabilities: Engage, Discover, Build Value, and Advance.

Engage asks whether the customer will meet with you and, once you are together, whether they will allow you to lead them through a productive process. The outcome is not whether the seller delivered a strong opening. It is whether the customer is willing to engage.

Discover asks whether the customer reveals the information required to understand their situation, priorities, decision drivers, and needs. Again, the measure is not whether the seller asked the prescribed questions. The measure is what the customer revealed.

Build Value asks whether the customer embraces the seller's recommendation. A technically flawless presentation that creates no belief change is not effective simply because the seller executed it well.

Advance asks whether the customer agrees to the appropriate next step. Not every conversation ends in a purchase, but an effective sales conversation should move the customer toward the next best decision.

Together, these four outcomes give sellers and managers a much clearer way to diagnose performance.

This Is What Makes the Framework Other-Centered®

Tab makes an important observation in the episode: the capabilities are customer-out.

That is a distinctly ASLAN way of thinking about sales effectiveness. The measure does not start with, Did the seller do what we taught them? It starts with, What happened with the customer?

Did they engage? Did they reveal? Did they believe? Did they move forward?

That matters because sellers can execute the same capability differently. One seller may be warm and conversational. Another may be analytical and highly structured. One may rely heavily on curiosity. Another may excel at framing insightful questions.

If both consistently create the required customer outcome, both can be effective. No seller needs to sound like the manager who coaches them.

Stop Coaching Sellers to Sell Like You

This is where capability-based coaching becomes especially useful for managers.

Tab recalls a manager early in his career who wanted Tab to sell the way he sold. The problem wasn't necessarily the manager's method. It was the assumption that one style produced success.

Sellers bring different personalities, strengths, talents, and communication styles to the job. Some are charismatic. Some are highly analytical. Some develop trust through warmth. Others develop trust through expertise.

Capability-based coaching allows for those differences. Instead of asking, Did you do it like I would have done it?, the manager can ask, Did you create the customer outcome we needed?

If the answer is yes, the seller's style may not need fixing. If the answer is no, then the manager and seller can collaboratively diagnose what prevented the outcome.

Better Coaching Starts With Less Debate

Traditional sales coaching can easily become subjective.

A manager says, "You should have listened more." The seller says, "I did listen."

The manager says, "You needed better questions." The seller says, "I thought my questions were good."

Now the coaching conversation has become a debate over technique.

Capability-based coaching changes the starting point. Did the customer reveal the necessary information? If not, both manager and seller can agree something broke down.

Now they can work together to understand why.

Tom compares it to athletics. If a receiver drops the ball or a tennis serve lands outside the box, the coach and athlete do not need to debate whether the outcome occurred. They can focus their energy on improving what caused it.

The same clarity can make sales coaching much more collaborative.

One Capability at a Time

Once sellers identify a capability gap, the temptation is to fix everything. ASLAN recommends the opposite.

Work on one capability at a time.

Start by asking which capability is creating the biggest barrier to the results you want. Is it Engage? Discover? Build Value? Advance?

Then isolate it.

If discovery is strong but customers rarely embrace the recommendation, that points toward Build Value. Now the seller and manager can investigate further. Is the seller struggling to connect the recommendation to the customer's needs? Do they lack product or business knowledge? Are they missing the skills required to communicate value?

The capability narrows the problem before the coaching begins.

That creates a much more focused development plan than trying to improve "selling skills" broadly.

Sellers Should Own Their Own Development

This framework is not only for managers.

Tom argues that sellers should take responsibility for their own careers. If you are not getting enough coaching, seek it out. If you understand the capabilities clearly enough, you can also begin diagnosing yourself.

After an important call, ask: Did I successfully engage the customer? What did they reveal? Did they embrace my recommendation? Did we agree to the right next step?

Those questions provide much better information than simply asking, Did I have a good call?

They also give sellers something specific to practice before the next one.

Focus on What You Can Control

Toward the end of the episode, Tom connects the principle to one of the most successful college football coaches, Nick Saban.

The lesson Tom draws from Saban's approach is simple: do not obsess over winning and losing. Focus on what produces winning.

Salespeople live in a world full of outcomes they cannot completely control. Markets change. Products change. Competitors change. Territories change. Customers change priorities.

You cannot control all of those things. You can control whether you do the work. You can control whether you practice. And you can develop the capabilities required to create better customer outcomes consistently.

That is a far more useful way to think about day-to-day sales effectiveness.

Results Are the Scoreboard. Capabilities Are the Game.

At the end of the quarter, sellers will still be measured by results. They will make quota or miss it. They will be promoted or they will not.

ASLAN is not suggesting otherwise.

But if a seller wants to improve, and if a manager wants to know what to coach, staring harder at the scoreboard will not provide the answer.

Look underneath it.

Engage. Discover. Build Value. Advance.

Measure those capabilities through the customer's response. Then isolate the gap and practice until it improves.

Because results tell you whether you won.

Capabilities tell you what you need to get better at to win again.