# Outcome-Based Selling

#concept #offer-design #sales

## Summary

Sell the result the buyer wants, not the deliverables you produce or the hours you spend. Sources across all three traditions converge on this; the Russian distillation pushes it one step further by adding **accountability for the result** as the thing actually being purchased, and [[dan-martell]] adds the time/money/status triad and the five offer elements.

## Current Understanding

The move is a reframe of the same work:

| Deliverable framing | Outcome framing |
|---|---|
| "I'll audit your calendar and set up some automations" | "I guarantee I'll buy back 10 hours of your time per week using AI, for $1,000/mo — every month" |
| "We develop X on Y stack" | Category named by pain + result |

Nobody wants "a workflow, a dashboard, and an agent" — they want hours of their week back and the business running without them ([[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]]).

**Accountability is the real product.** The sharpest claim in the vault: *sell the result and accountability for it* — origin [[2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively]] ("sell SOLUTIONS, not work" in [[2026-06-15-konspekt-aphorisms]]). Willing to take accountability → the AI era enriches you; unwilling → a 12-month death sentence. This explains *why* outcome framing commands a premium — the seller is absorbing risk the buyer would otherwise carry. It also sets the boundary: an outcome you can't actually be accountable for is not an offer, it's a liability. No source addresses what happens when a guaranteed outcome isn't delivered.

**The supply-side twin: product ownership.** Promising an outcome is only survivable if the delivery culture actually *owns* outcomes rather than tickets — see [[product-ownership]] ([[sebastian]]'s "no one ever needed a programmer; people have problems you solve"). Outcome-selling and outcome-owning are the sales-side and work-side of the same principle.

**What outcomes are made of — time, money, status** ([[2026-07-23-make-my-first-100k-in-month]], [[dan-martell]]): people pay for exactly three things — buy back my hours (time), make/save me money (the easiest sell: pay money → get more money), or raise my standing (status — routinely ignored and underpriced). A useful taxonomy of *which* outcome to promise; at $1K+/mo he aims all three at **business owners**, who feel each and decide fast. "Features tell; outcomes sell" — don't say "I do marketing for $1K/month," say "I'll get you 10 new clients a month."

**The five offer elements** (same source): every offer states an **outcome**, a **deliverable** (what shows up weekly/monthly), an **investment** (never "cost"), a **risk reversal** — a specific guarantee ("10 leads/month," "save 10 hours/week") — and **urgency** (limited slots, deposit to lock in). The risk-reversal element is this vault's accountability claim operationalized as a checklist item; note it inherits the same gap flagged below — a guarantee is named, its mechanics never are.

**Outcomes must be countable.** The working examples are all numeric: 10 hrs/week (= 40 hrs/month, recurring); "spend 10× less on X". This connects to the tactical minimum in [[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]] — 2–3 case studies with Before/After **numbers**, "without them you have nothing to sell a result with." An outcome without a number is a slogan.

## Evidence

- "Sell outcomes, not deliverables" — the entire §8 cross-cutting principles of [[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]]
- The buy-back-10-hours reframe and its 40 hrs/month math — [[2026-07-17-design-the-perfect-offer]]
- **Primary:** "sell result + accountability, not hours"; "12-month death sentence" — [[2026-06-15-rodenko-selling-development-expensively]]
- "Sell SOLUTIONS, not work"; "2–3 Before/After case studies… without them you have nothing to sell a result with" — [[2026-06-15-konspekt-aphorisms]]
- "Benefit → then feature" (польза → потом фича) — [[2026-06-15-making-money-with-ai-2026]]
- Time/money/status triad; "features tell, outcomes sell"; the five offer elements incl. risk reversal — [[2026-07-23-make-my-first-100k-in-month]] ([[dan-martell]])
- Supply-side twin: "no one ever needed a programmer; people have problems you solve" — [[2026-07-06-sebastian-interview-ai-and-software-engineering]]
- Condensed restatement — [[2026-06-15-selling-development-services-in-the-ai-era]]

## Related Pages

- [[product-ownership]] — the supply-side twin: owning outcomes, not tickets
- [[productized-service]] — the vehicle that makes outcome-selling repeatable
- [[pricing-from-value]] — an outcome is what price gets justified against
- [[pain-discovery]] — the outcome is the inverse of the bottleneck you find
- [[methodology-as-moat]] — the method is how you can promise the outcome credibly
- [[overview]]

## Contradictions / Uncertainty

- **Guarantee mechanics are undefined.** Both sources use "guarantee" freely ("I guarantee 10 hours/week", "if we guaranteed the result"), neither specifies refund, remediation, or measurement. `Status: tentative` — the word may be doing rhetorical rather than contractual work.
- How is "10 hours/week bought back" actually measured and agreed on with the client? Unaddressed by both.

## Next Questions

- What does a real guarantee clause look like in a $1K/mo productized contract?
- Which outcomes are safely promisable vs. dependent on client behavior (e.g. the client must actually adopt the workflow)?
- How do you sell an outcome for work whose value is *avoided* cost (security, reliability) where the counterfactual is unobservable?
