Sales Education – Books – Solution selling the revolutionary sales process

Part One – Solution Selling Concepts

• • Chapter One Solutions

    • Many companies and claim to provide solutions actually just sell a product, The word solution gets thrown around so much as a ‘potential or perceived’ answer to a problem = solution. There are ‘solutions’ companies of all kinds (and yes of course everything is subjective) but many are using the phrase as a marketing and branding exercise because that’s what they think people want to see.
    • So if you ask people (and I asked my sales team) what is a solution? The most common response is, “An answer to a problem.” Of course this is correct, but also the problem cannot be your perceived version of a problem, it must be accepted by the customer that they have the problem. It then becomes a mutually agreed problem. You must also ensure that if you intend on providing a solution that you can demonstrate a benefit. Consider the baseline (what does it look like today) and be able to demonstrate an improvement (what it looks like after) and that the after must be better, and deliver against the customers expectations and goals.

  • Chapter Two Principles

    • No pain no change – Keith Eades writes about the fact that generally without some form of business issue (pain), the customer will not be able to demonstrate a benefit, and therefore will not buy. He goes on to say that even in personal life, when perhaps buying a luxury (wanted but not needed) item, the pain of desiring something but not having it is real. So you feel the pain and buy it! There are various other really valid and useful sections I will skip for now, but one that really stood out for me was;
    • Diagnose before you prescribe – I have seen it and heard it many times over my years in business. Sales people (and pre sales consultants) doing it the other way around ‘prescribing before diagnosing’ telling the customer what they have to sell,  what the customer should buy. But this is often before they have taken the time to understand the customers business, or diagnose the customer issue/pain. How crazy does that sound, but how often if you listen out for it, does that happen? The next principle that Keith Eades also writes about is 3 levels of need.

He writes that the 3 levels of need are (top down):

• • • Level 3 ‘vision of a solution’, the buyer accepts that they have pain and has a vision of what needs to be done to fix it.
    • Level 2 ‘admitted pain’ the buyer is willing to discuss problems, difficulties, or dissatisfaction with the existing situation. They know that they have pain but do not know how to solve it.
    • Level 1 ‘latent pain’ buyers who are not looking and not actively trying to solve a problem are in latent pain. These buyers either are ignoring the problem exists or believe that there is no way to fix the problem.

Keith Eades summarises: will find buyers at all three levels. In the first level of latent pain, your job as the salesperson is to make buyers aware that a problem exists. In the second level, admitted pain, your job is to confirm the pain that they’re having and lead them to a vision of a solution. At the third level, vision of a solution, the approach is to develop or re-create a vision of what the buyer will be able to do differently after implementing your capabilities.

• • Another really valuable principle is “you can’t sell to someone who can’t buy”.
    
    • How many times have you or a colleague spent a huge amount of time with ‘prospects’ having endless meetings, taking them to lunch, sports events and so on, to influence them to buy from you. You may have yourself and the extended team running around doing technical designs and proposals and then you realise that they do not have the power. These people are key of course, and most likely influencers’ or users of your product and service, but they can not buy. Keith Eades recommends that you start higher and get sponsored down, its much more effective than having to go over the head of the person that you have built a relationship with!

The above is a snapshot of what for me is a truly inspired book on solution selling practices, the book continues with all of the Chapters below but I recommend that you buy it and read it. You may read it and just relate, it may not teach you something entirely new, but if you as a sales professional can take just one bit to make you more successful then it was worth the £. The book is available in all of the usual places in hard copy or electronic format.

• • • Chapter Three Sales Process

• • • Chapter Four Precall Planning and Research
    • Chapter Five Stimulating Interest
    • Chapter Six Defining Pain or Critical Business Issue
    • Chapter Seven Diagnose Before You Prescribe
    • Chapter Eight Creating Visions Biased to Your Solution

• • • Chapter Nine Selling When You re Not First
    • Chapter Ten Vision Re-engineering

• • • Chapter Eleven Gaining Access to People with Power
    • Chapter Twelve Controlling the Buying Process
    • Chapter Thirteen Closing: Reaching Final Agreement

• • • Chapter Fourteen Getting Started with the Process
    • Chapter Fifteen Sales Management System: Managers Managing Pipelines and Salespeople
    • Chapter Sixteen Creating and Sustaining High-Performance Sales Cultures