programmes

The evidence architecture

Evidence underpins every aspect of a Sales Reset programme. Not as a reporting exercise at the end, but as the fundamental question behind every conversation.

Start with customers. Sellers learn to ask: What does that mean specifically? What's happening now? What evidence supports this being the priority? Conventional sellers accept customer statements at face value. Outcome-accountable sellers don't.
Inside the organisation, the same question. Team leaders ask: What evidence do we have that this opportunity is genuine? Senior leaders ask: What evidence do we have that these sales pipelines give us confidence to invest?
Design it into the purchase from the outset. How will impact be measured? When? By whom? When customers realise you intend to return and gather evidence of outcomes achieved, the quality of the conversation changes.
AI is embedded in every aspect of evidence. Capture, synthesis, scoring, reporting, and emerging insight. The evidence architecture is practical because AI makes it sustainable.
This is harder than it sounds. Few organisations gather post-sale evidence of outcomes achieved rigorously. But if you can't measure it afterwards, it probably wasn't defined precisely enough at the start.

In most organisations, the first baseline finding is an absence. Not poor scores. No scores. No record of whether customer outcomes were defined in proposals, how precisely, in whose language, or whether delivery colleagues agreed they were achievable before the commitment was made.
The system simply doesn't ask. Proposals are reviewed for commercial terms, pricing, and competitive positioning. Whether the customer's expected outcomes are clearly defined, measurable, and deliverable is rarely part of the conversation.
This isn't a failure of individuals. It's a consequence of a sales system designed to secure signatures, not to define outcomes. The absence is the most powerful evidence that something needs to change, and it's available before the programme begins.

Outcome definition quality. Are customer outcomes defined in sales proposals? How precisely? In the customer's language or in generic terms? Without clearly defined outcomes at the point of sale, outcome achievement is impossible to assess.
Proposal quality. Beyond outcome definitions, are proposals describing what the seller wants to sell, or what the customer needs to achieve? Are they co-created or sent cold? Proposals are documentary evidence. They can be scored, compared, and tracked over time.
Stakeholder breadth. How many stakeholders are engaged per opportunity, at what seniority level, and from which functions? Are delivery colleagues involved before commitment, or do they inherit it afterwards?
Sales performance. Win rates, deal values, margins, pipeline conversion, forecast accuracy, renewal and expansion revenue. The baseline allows you to see which ones move and by how much.
Outcome achievement. Are customers achieving what they expected? This is the most important measure and the one that takes the longest to answer. Within a 90-day pilot, early indicators become visible. Over subsequent quarters, the picture becomes increasingly clear.

Coaching skills are evidence-seeking skills. The same discipline of asking "what does success look like?" drives the evidence architecture. It's also the core of how sellers learn to work with customers.
3CSelling at RICS. Watch the video to see how Peter Button introduced the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors sales team to the 3CSelling approach: Coach, Co-Create, Conclude.