Selling with Noble Purpose

1. Noble Purpose Drives Sales Performance and Engagement

"Salespeople who sold with Noble Purpose—who truly wanted to make a difference to customers—consistently outsold the salespeople who were focused on sales goals and money."

Purpose outperforms profit focus. Research shows that salespeople driven by a desire to improve customers' lives consistently outperform those focused solely on hitting quotas and making money. This counterintuitive approach leads to:

• Higher sales revenue and larger deals
• Increased customer loyalty and retention
• Greater job satisfaction and employee engagement

Purpose-driven salespeople are more resilient, ask better questions, and create stronger connections with customers. They're able to articulate value more effectively and are less likely to resort to discounting. By aligning their efforts with a higher goal, they tap into intrinsic motivation that sustains performance over the long term.

2. Reframe Sales from Profit-Centric to Customer Impact-Focused

"Profit is not the purpose of a business but rather the test of its validity."

Shift focus to customer impact. Traditional sales approaches often prioritize internal metrics over customer outcomes. This leads to:

• Short-term thinking and transactional relationships
• Commoditization and price-based competition
• Decreased innovation and strategic thinking

By reframing sales around the impact on customers' lives and businesses, organizations can:

• Create sustainable competitive advantage
• Drive innovation and long-term growth
• Build deeper, more meaningful customer relationships
• Increase employee engagement and retention

This shift requires aligning the entire organization around a customer-centric purpose, from leadership messaging to performance metrics and incentives.

3. Craft and Communicate Your Noble Sales Purpose (NSP)

"Your NSP should articulate both your aim and your lane: the impact you aspire to have, and where you intend to do it."

Define your unique impact. A well-crafted Noble Sales Purpose (NSP) clearly articulates how your organization makes a difference to customers. To create an effective NSP:

1. Answer three key questions:

   • How do you make a difference to customers?
   • How are you different from competitors?
   • On your best day, what do you love about your job?

2. Keep it concise, specific, and action-oriented

3. Ensure it's both aspirational and achievable

Examples of effective NSPs:

• "We help small businesses be more successful" (CMIT Solutions)
• "We fuel prosperity" (Atlantic Capital Bank)
• "We redefine our industry" (Supportworks)

Communicate your NSP consistently across all touchpoints, from sales interactions to marketing materials and internal communications.

4. Use Customer Intelligence to Activate Your NSP

"You can't make a difference to your customers if you don't understand them."

Deepen customer understanding. To effectively activate your NSP, salespeople need to gather robust customer intelligence in five key areas:

1. Customer environment
2. Customer goals
3. Customer challenges
4. What success looks like for the customer
5. What lack of success looks like for the customer

By focusing on these areas, salespeople can:

• Ask more insightful questions
• Uncover hidden opportunities
• Create more compelling proposals and presentations
• Establish stronger emotional connections with customers

Train your team to consistently gather and utilize this intelligence, integrating it into your CRM and sales processes to drive more meaningful customer interactions.

5. Transform Sales Interactions with Purpose-Driven Techniques

"The questions you ask your salespeople become the questions they ask their customers."

Elevate sales conversations. Purpose-driven sales techniques create more engaging and differentiated customer interactions. Key approaches include:

1. "You-Me-You" call openings:

   • Start with a topic of interest to the customer
   • Briefly state your expertise
   • Ask an insightful question to engage the customer

2. Purpose-driven presentations and proposals:

   • Summarize customer intelligence
   • Clearly state what success looks like for the client
   • Describe how the customer will be different after working with you
   • Provide proof through customer impact stories

3. Noble Purpose negotiations:

   • Focus on creating mutual value
   • Articulate the long-term impact of your solution
   • Stand firm on your differentiated value proposition

By consistently using these techniques, salespeople can create more meaningful conversations that lead to larger deals and stronger customer relationships.

6. Build a Culture of True Believers Through Purpose

"The internal conversation will always become the external conversation."

Create a purpose-driven culture. To build a tribe of true believers, infuse your Noble Purpose into every aspect of your organization:

• Language: Develop a unique lexicon that reinforces your purpose
• Artifacts: Display visual reminders of your impact on customers
• Beliefs: Clearly articulate and reinforce your core values
• Daily practices: Align routines and rituals with your purpose
• Metrics: Measure and celebrate customer impact alongside financial results

Purpose-driven culture-building activities:

• Start meetings with customer impact stories
• Create a "day in the life" of your customer experience for employees
• Recognize and reward purpose-driven behaviors
• Use your NSP as a decision-making filter

By consistently reinforcing your purpose, you create a shared belief system that drives engagement, innovation, and differentiation.

7. Incentivize and Recruit for Noble Purpose

"If you want to create a differentiated sales team, you have to point them toward a different target."

Align incentives with impact. Traditional sales incentives often focus solely on short-term financial metrics. To drive purpose-driven performance:

1. Reward customer results and long-term impact
2. Recognize interim behaviors that align with your NSP
3. Celebrate customer retention and relationship-building
4. Create incremental promotions and growth opportunities
5. Use public recognition to reinforce purpose-driven actions

In recruiting, lead with your Noble Purpose to attract like-minded individuals:

• Craft job postings that emphasize making a difference
• Use purpose-focused interview questions to assess alignment
• Create an onboarding experience that reinforces your NSP

By incentivizing and recruiting for purpose, you create a self-reinforcing cycle of engagement and performance.

8. Overcome Fear and Resistance to Purpose-Driven Sales

"Fear makes you frantic. You want salespeople who are focused."

Address fear and skepticism. Implementing a purpose-driven approach often faces resistance. Common challenges include:

• Fear of change and uncertainty
• Skepticism about the financial impact
• Resistance from traditionally-minded leaders

To overcome these obstacles:

1. Lead with the financial case for purpose
2. Share concrete examples of success stories
3. Start with early adopters and build momentum
4. Use customer impact stories to build emotional engagement
5. Provide clear frameworks and tools for implementation

Remember that purpose is not about eliminating financial goals, but rather providing a more powerful way to achieve them. By addressing fears and demonstrating results, you can build buy-in across the organization.

9. Align Technology and Training with Your NSP

"Your technology should be humanizing your customers, not the opposite."

Purpose-driven systems and skills. Ensure your sales technology and training reinforce your Noble Purpose:

CRM and sales tools:

• Capture and prominently display customer impact information
• Use prompts and fields that reinforce purpose-driven behaviors
• Share customer stories and success metrics through internal communication channels

Training approaches:

• Use experiential, self-discovery learning methods
• Practice purpose-driven techniques in realistic scenarios
• Reinforce the "why" behind new skills and behaviors

By aligning your systems and skill development with your NSP, you create a consistent ecosystem that supports purpose-driven sales.

10. Sustain Noble Purpose Across the Organization

"Noble Purpose does not eliminate sales targets; it puts them in context."

Embed purpose organization-wide. To create lasting impact, Noble Purpose must extend beyond the sales team:

1. Leadership: Use the "Big Six CEO Moments of Purpose" to reinforce NSP
2. Finance: Frame financial discussions around customer impact
3. Marketing: Create tools and messaging that activate purpose in sales interactions
4. Product Development: Use customer goals to drive innovation
5. HR: Integrate purpose into hiring, onboarding, and development processes
6. Operations: Align processes and metrics with customer impact

Use the Six-P model (Purpose, Profit, Process, Products, Promotion, People) to ensure balance and integration across functions. By embedding purpose throughout the organization, you create a powerful, differentiated culture that drives sustainable growth and engagement.

Last updated: May 12, 2025