Solution Selling®

Solution Selling® is a selling methodology that is unique in that is has a well-defined sales process.


Solution Selling® Sales Process

Few high-achieving salespeople can diagnose exactly what it is that makes them win some deals and lose others. If you were to walk into any department of most companies, there would be proven processes in place, e.g. if you walked into the Finance area you would see a process for paying suppliers and producing Management information, and Marketing would have a process for launching new products or services. What do you find if you look around most sales organisations? Often nothing more than each salesperson applying their varied skills in many different ways, with very varied and often unpredictable results. And with Management, often unable to assess progress.


Solution Selling® gives salespeople and their support teams a simple way to measure their progress with each prospect, to understand success and prepare them to repeat it. The outcome of a Solution sale should be a satisfied customer, wanting to buy more.


A sales process is a documented set of repeatable inter-related sales activities from market awareness, through the selling activities, to servicing the customer that can be communicated to anyone in the company. Each activity can be measured for throughput and efficiency. Each activity has an owner who executes the activity. The result of each activity has a standard deliverable that is checked for quality and consistency. Each deliverable can be assessed so that improvements can be made to either the people performing the activities, or to the sales process itself.


The result is consistent and predictable revenue production.


Behavioural model

Solution Selling® is behaviourally-based; founded on extensive research as to how people buy and how they like to be sold to, and why many salespeople often ignore the traditional sales training they are given. The programme takes this behavioural model and, through a series of practical exercises, teaches students how to initiate and control a sales cycle and behave in a way that makes the buyer want to buy from them.


Skill-Based

To execute a sales process successfully demands competencies found instinctively in some and missing from others. Most sales development programmes prescribe “what” to do and leave it to the attendee to figure out the "how to". In the Solution Selling® methodology, having defined the most effective behaviour and selected a process that leads to success, attendees identify the practical skills they need to succeed and start to develop them.


To support the process in different situations there are a number of automated Job Aids that capture the knowledge required for success to ensure the seller does the right thing in the right way at the right time, and can repeat success.


Workshop Outputs

  • At the end of the typical Solution Selling ® workshop, attendees will have an understanding of:
  • The pitfalls of traditional selling behaviour.
  • How risk adverse non-expert organisations buy products and services they don’t fully understand:
    • how needs develop in the minds of the buyer.
    • how needs can be developed across an organisation.
    • how they make the decision to buy.
  • The key skills needed to succeed in high difficulty selling situations.
  • How to establish personal credibility, confidence, power and control throughout the sales cycle.
  • The concepts of Team Selling - the roles of the salesperson, sales support, support and management.
  • How people buy - the three levels of need, and the buyer’s psychological buying phases:
    • Changing concerns over the buying process.
    • Anticipating the buyer’s behaviour.
    • Why risk objections are positive and how to handle them.
  • How to match their selling behaviour to the buying phases.
  • How to:
    • get the prospect to understand the value of what they are buying.
    • show a prospect the salesperson understands their business.
    • get the prospect to admit and focus on problems you can help them address.
    • diagnose their problems with a bias towards your product capabilities.
    • put responsibility on the buyer to solve their problems with your product and services.
    • create a vision of a solution in the buyer’s mind using your capabilities.
    • reduce demonstration / pilot / trial times by having the buyer want to buy.
  • How to gain access to and establish credibility with senior executives.
  • How to confidently negotiate the final agreement without giving away discounts.
  • How to manage their sales pipeline and improve predictability of forecasting.

Those who adopt and implement the Solution Selling® process will:

  • know how to isolate differences in markets from differences in sales skills and approach.
  • have salespeople able to give post-salespeople specific measures for customer success so that they can manage and develop accounts over time.
  • have a consistent basis for the allocation of time & other key resources to sales opportunities.
  • be able to determine whether a lead has a large or small potential.
  • be able to adapt to changes in the market such as new players, new buying trends.
  • be able to communicate locally and with remote offices in a way that minimises expense and maximises effectiveness.
  • have a common nomenclature that indicates where the salesperson is in the sales process compared to where the customer is in their buying/evaluation cycle.
  • have salespeople become productive quickly by equipping them with the product and market knowledge in the shortest possible time.
  • avoid being trapped with people who cannot say "yes".

What Others Have Found

Here are some comments from other Sales Executives, on the outcome of their teams attending the Solution Selling® programme:

  • Even in what has been described as a difficult market we grew our revenue in 2003 by 59% by using Solution Selling®
  • I started out looking for a sales training program, then realised after meeting with you that Solution Selling® might offer even more in terms of a real process and finally discovered through the programme itself that we can systematically and successfully approach a fundamental redesign/re-engineering of our sales philosophy and organisation by using Solution Selling®.
  • We have already noted better qualification and better value justification techniques in the sales force. The programme is reducing long expensive sales cycles and improving our negotiation stance.
  • Our people have bought in 100% and are using the skills they learnt. Compensation plans for 2004 will be tied to the use of the techniques.
  • Our win rate has gone from one in four to one in two and our sales cycle has decreased at the same time.
  • I have never been more than 5% adrift in my forecasting since attending the workshop.
  • This has taught my team “how” to sell; I wish I had adopted the Solution Selling® process ten years ago. This is the best workshop I have ever attended.