“Solution selling” - whether you choose to employ SPIN Selling, TAS (Target Account Selling), Miller-Heimann, SPI’s Solution Selling™ or any of the other recognised methodologies - cannot be mastered simply by sending people on a training course. Adopting solution selling involves a cultural change that has to pervade every aspect of your sales and marketing activities - or the initiative will surely fail.
The training companies admit as much. Their own studies have shown that without regular reinforcement, 80-90% of everything that has been taught will have been forgotten or abandoned within 2-4 weeks. Moving to e-learning based systems can help to maintain the message, but even that is an incomplete answer. It’s clear that training by itself isn’t the complete answer.
It should be obvious that you can’t offer a “solution” without first understanding the problem. So, to become organisationally successful at solution selling - and for your investment in sales training to pay off - your sales people have to become experts in identifying and solving problems that your prospects and customers care deeply about, and which you can help them address more effectively than any other option open to them.
From our perspective, all of the sales training methodologies we’ve mentioned - and there are many others - are generally pretty effective. Some have particular strengths in certain sales environments. But the thing that really makes the difference is not which methodology you choose - it lies in the strength of your commitment to ensure that your chosen methodology becomes deeply embedded into your day-to-day sales and marketing activities.
We work with clients to help them put the “fuel in the tank” that drives their sales training investments forward. We help them to embed their chosen methodology into their CRM systems and their sales management and review processes. We equip them with sale-cycle-relevant sales tools and collateral that serve to advance the buying process. And we help them ensure that they get a real ROI from the exercise.
Take the Next Step
We would be pleased to share what we’ve learned about helping high-growth-potential organisations to reinforce their investments in sales training as part of a balanced programme of sales and marketing performance improvement. As a first step, you may find it useful to self-audit your current sales and marketing processes.
As soon as you are ready to learn more, please email us at salestrain@inflexion-point.com, or call us on +44 (0) 118 975 0595. We look forward to discovering whether we might be able to help your organisation to improve its performance in this critical area.