Solution Sales – A Dying Art?

 

It was circa 1996, when I had the opportunity to attend an IBM India Software Solution Sales Workshop in Mumbai (then called Bombay), “The City that Never Sleeps”. I had travelled from Kolkata (then called Calcutta), “The City of Joy”, expecting it to be just another workshop!

But boy, what an experience it was! Even after these long 26 years, what I learnt in those 2 days have been truly enriching. I am sharing here based on my recollections and some notes I had scribbled then!

Below are the 10 Basic Principles of Solution Sales, which I call 10 Golden Nuggets:

1.      No Pain, No Change/Gain

2.      Pain Flows through an Entire Organisation

3.      You Can’t Sell to Someone Who Can’t Buy

4.      Solution equals to Buying Vision

5.      People make Emotional Decisions for Logical Reasons

6.      People Buy from People

7.      Power Buys from Power

8.      If You are not ready to Walk Away, you are not ready to Sell

9.      Make Yourself Equal before Re-engineering Vision

10.   Don’t Close it Before it’s Closable

Let me touch upon some of these with my takeaways from the workshop and also my experiences.

1.      No Pain, No Gain – Solution sales, as the name suggests, is about solution to a business problem or a need. If there is no need, there is no need for a solution. Sometimes enterprise customers may be aware of a business problem or a need but may be unclear about how to solve it, that is the ideal scenario of a consultative solution selling process. A classic analogy will be the patient-doctor example. Based on the patient’s expressed problems, doctor’s do diagnosis and then do the prescription/treatment. On the other hand, for common ailments like headaches, the patient does not consult a doctor and uses OTC medicines (analogy to commodity offerings). Understanding customer’s real business need early is key.

2.      Pain Flows through an Entire Organisation – The example shared in the workshop was that of a sales rep interviewing various stakeholders in an enterprise. First was the CFO whose pain was eroding profits and reason for that being sales team not achieving sales goals. This led the sales rep to his next port of call, the VP Sales whose pain was not meeting sales goals and reason for the same being non-availability of weekly product catalogue. The sales rep then met the Dir. MIS whose pain was Line VPs unhappy with weekly product catalogue with reason being the organisation being saddled with legacy systems with no integration between them. Bingo, the sales rep got the solution opportunity for the organisational pain points. Weaving the pain chain is a critical process to understand the organisation’s business needs.

 

3.      You Can’t Sell to Someone Who Can’t Buy – There can be two ways of looking at this one. One, if your contact is not a decision maker (but an influencer or gatekeeper), he/she cannot make the buying decision. So, you need to reach and interact at decision-making levels. The other way of looking at this is, it’s better not to waste too much time and effort on a customer, who can’t either afford your offerings / price points. Qualifying a customer on budgets / spend ability early in the sales cycle is paramount.

 

4.      People Buy from People – Finally, that’s how it gets done. On both sides of your organization and customer organization, there are people who represent each organization and are their respective faces. Building familiarity to comfort with mutual confidence and trust are the basic tenets to build long-lasting relationships, just like it is in personal lives! The same relationships built in this customer organization tomorrow can also be leveraged when people move to other organizations! Relationships matter!

 

5.    Power Buys from Power – This is very relevant in large / multi-year / transformative deal constructs, when the customer CXOs like CEO/CFO are final decision makers. As a sales rep / account manager, you may have done a great job of mapping the customer and built deep relationships with the CIO and Line VPs, the CXOs may still want to see commitments from more higher-ups in your organisation as a vendor. You need to then involve your appropriate leadership (CEO or Delivery Head, etc.) to convey such organisation-level commitments and their skin-in-the-game by being part of Steering Committees/participation in Governance meetings, etc. for program success. Power Projection adds heft to the story!

 

6.      If you are not ready to Walk Away, you are not ready to Sell – One can co-relate this to “Value-based solution selling process”. There are situations when a customer says his/her only buying criteria is lowest price! Here one needs to convince the customer on business case and ROI, and showcase value of your offerings. This value-based solution selling model also helps you to differentiate from competition and pricing then becomes linked to the value you showed to the customer, rather than haggling on budgets, price wars and discounting. If it still doesn’t work (as in most cases, customers are smart enough to not let out any signals of being convinced!), you should just leave the deal on the table and walk away! This then becomes a clear signal to the customer that this is your final threshold, and in most cases the customer will eventually sign up with you.  One can’t put a Price to a Thing of Value!

 

7.     Don’t Close it Before it’s Closable - Unlike commoditised offerings, solution sales can be protracted and lengthy. There are so many variables and dynamics at play, and it’s not always easy to be in control and be on top of the sales cycles in all cases over longer periods of time. E.g., Customer decision timelines can drag, customer needs can morph, customer stakeholders might change, a new competitor entrant can muddy the waters, etc. One needs to be patient and, on their toes, like an angler does when the fish finally catches the bait! But at the same time, one also needs to continuously assess if this is the right customer or the opportunity, and if required be prepared to bite the bullet, cut the losses and move on. There are always other customers out there, like there are other ponds/lakes to fish! The patient Angler catches the Fish!

So, how does one go about Solution Selling?

1.      Doing the internal homework – Any offering of the company should be understood holistically and deeply by the solution sellers - what is the offering, who is this offering targeted to, what customer business problems does it solve, how to position it, why should the customer buy it, how is the offering different from others, how is it priced, how does it get deployed/implemented in the customer environment, who are the reference customers, who would be the internal team members who will play a role in the sales cycle for pre-sales, how to handle objection statements, etc.

 

2.      Doing the customer homework –These days through Google seraches, social platforms like LinkedIn and other sources on the internet, one can gather lot of background information on the customer account. These need to be added with own efforts to gather info about the customer - Is it our existing customer for another offering, does the customer fit into the target segment profile of the offering, what business is the customer in/what are the challenges & trends in that industry sector/do we other similar reference customers in that business/industry vertical, what is the customer’s existing IT landscape/IT budgets/spend history/existing IT vendors, what is the customer’s organization hierarchy/buying and decision-making process, what is our reach level/are we talking to decision makers/CXOs or influencers or gatekeepers, etc.

 

3.      Qualifying the customer – This involves finding these inputs to these questions during the sales cycle - What (is the need/solution to what business problem), Whose (need of which function/dept, sponsor), How much (has this been budgeted & amount), When (is there are a timeline pegged to decide & implement), How (will customer decide and evaluation & decision making process), Who else (competition intel), Why (should the customer buy from us/what needs to be done for that) etc.

 

4.      Drawing up a Win Plan – Based on inputs from above points, an action plan needs to be drawn up and executed that covers elements like - positioning your company & offering including differentiators and value proposition, mapping the customer stakeholders for buy-ins, demonstrating to customer stakeholders including decision makers how your offering addresses their need and if you have similar reference customers play those cards, involving the right mix of team from your side including pre-sales/solution/senior management at appropriate stages of the sales cycle, giving confidence to customer that they will be in safe hands by walking them through your implementation & support methodologies and solution assets & frameworks, being prepared with the engagements models and  pricing/negotiation strategy, etc. For very large deals, constructs like “war rooms” can also be used.

In this age of social media, automation & AI, is Solution Selling a Dying Art? That would be a topic for discussion another day. Till then…

 Happy Solution Selling!

A Blog Series on Partnerships & Alliances

Dated: July 19, 2022

Author: Subham Sarkar (https://www.linkedin.com/in/subham-sarkar-519b7114/)