Solution selling. Consultative selling. Customer-centric selling. Value-based selling. Strategic selling. A massive global sales training industry has built up around the promise that sales organisations can dramatically improve their performance by evolving from a product-led to solution-centric selling.
A range of apparently competing solution selling methodologies have emerged, most of which represent simple variations on a common theme - put the customer first.
It's the method, not the methodology...
But when you examine the evidence, the thing that most reliably distinguishes top performing sales organisations from the also-ran is not which methodology they chose - but how effectively they have implemented their chosen solution selling methodology, and made it part of the very fabric of how they do business on a day-to-day basis.
Making solution selling a way of life...
Over the years, we've implemented many of the most popular sales training programmes. Of course, we have our favourites, but at the end of the day we are generally agnostic about which methodology to use, but passionate about the importance of following the methodology through.
This was brought home to us in some recent analysis by a leading sales training organisation, who found that without systematic management reinforcement 90% of their content was being ignored less than a month after the completion of the training course.
Aligning sales, marketing and management...
With this in mind, our emphasis is on helping clients follow-through on their chosen solution selling methodology and ensure that it is embedded into every aspect of their sales and marketing processes and priorities.
It's important to actively engage marketing in this exercise - we have repeatedly observed the critical importance of embedding "solution selling" principles in the creation of marketing campaigns, materials and sales tools.
Room for improvement?
Unfortunately, there's an all too common disconnect between many marketing and sales organisations when it comes to messaging and materials.
The best sales people compensate for this by creating their own tools - ones that reflect what they need to support their sales activities.
In the meantime, many of the marketing department's well-meaning materials lie unused because they play no useful role in facilitating the buying process. What a terrible waste of effort and resources!
A sales enablement action plan...
Drawing upon best-practice benchmarks from top performing sales organisations, we will work with you to help you embded your chosen solution selling methodology throughout the organisation.
We start with voice of the customer interviews that identify the key stages in the typical prospect's buying process, complemented by interactive internal workshops that identify current best practice.
Facilitating the prospect's buying process...
A core deliverable is a customer decision journey map that aligns the key stages in your target prospect's typical buying processes with the key stages in your sales process.
This alignment between your prospect's buying process and youe sales process is critical to successfully implementing solution selling, and can help to ensure that:
- CRM stages are clearly defined and accurately aligned with the prospect's actual buying process
- Promotion of deals from one stage to the next is based on evidence of buyer activity and not sales perception
- Marketing campaigns and actions are clearly targeted on advancing the prospect from one stage to the next
- Sales tools reinforce "solution selling" principles and help the sales person to facilitate the prospect's buying process
Are you ready for a fresh perspective?
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519 0295.
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