The Problem With “Solution” Selling

OK, most sellers are clueless about solution selling. They’ve been taught to pitch products! They talk about product capabilities, features, functions, move to a demo, then close. The customer has to figure out whether the product solves their problem.

Fortunately, for these sellers, customers are engaging them in the last 15% of their buying process. By that time, they have figured out their problem, they have researched solutions, they have narrowed it to a shortlist, and they are interested in learning about the products.  And this is what most sellers are trained to do.

In complex B2B, this approach isn’t as effective.  Even if the customer has reached the point of developing a short list, in addition to the capabilities of the products, they are concerned about the outcomes they should realize.  Will it improve our efficiency, by how much?  Will it help drive revenue, by how much?  Will it……, by how much?

Solution selling has enabled us to have higher quality conversations about both our products and what they do for the customer.  We create business cases, define our value proposition.  We differentiate our offerings based on the outcomes we help our customers achieve.

But, even as well as we might execute our solution selling strategies, we and our customers miss the majority of opportunity.  We know all the data around how the majority of customers struggle to reach the point of considering solutions.  The biggest challenges our customers face is recognizing they may have a problem/opportunity, defining it, understanding it, engaging the right people in the organization, and getting support to do something about this.

In product focused and solution selling, we don’t help the customer with this!  We typically leave them to figure it out themselves.

But they don’t know how!  It’s not as if they have done this frequently in the past  If they had, they probably wouldn’t be experiencing these challenges.  In complex B2B, they seldom  face these.  As a result they struggle through the process.  They have no interest in talking about solutions until they thoroughly understand the problem and it’s impact to them.

Theoretically, we have great advantage in this.  We have extensive experience working with 100s/1000s of customers with similar issues.  But if we’ve always focused on our solutions, the reality is we have little experience in the problem solving the customer must undertake to be in a position to consider solutions.

How do we change this?  How do we learn more about problems and problem solving processes?  How do we start engaging our customers in discussions about their problems, eventually moving to helping the customers solve those problems?

It’s actually pretty easy, it is just a slight expansion of how we look at things.  Some things to get started:

1. What are the problems we are best in the world at solving?  We have to be very specific in defining these.
2. Who has these problems?  What industries/markets?  What organizations with those industries/markets?  What people/functions within the organizations?
3. How do these problems arise in these organizations?  How do they impact the people within these organizations?  How do we help our customers learn about these?  How do we help them develop and execute a project to address these?

The more we understand our customers, their businesses, what they do and how things get done, the better we equip ourselves to help them solve their problems.  This is the focus of business acumen.  If we are going to help our customers recognize their problems and solve them, we have to understand them and their businesses.

If we’ve mastered solution selling, we are part of the way there, we at least have some knowledge of the problems we solve, but we have to increase our understanding of what causes them, how do address them, and how to navigate the problem solving process.

Once we master problem focused selling, then there is the next opportunity.  This opportunity can help drive even more opportunities.

It’s helping people recognize they have a problem and inciting them to change. 

Solution selling is a great first step, but there is so much more opportunity if we change!

Afterword:  Regular readers will recognize this new addition to my posts.  I have leveraged AI characters to discuss the article from a slightly different point of view.  They actually raise some fascinating perspectives.  Enjoy!