I’m a fan of “solutions” and “solution selling.” True, these terms have been widely used and diluted from their original meanings. In fact, I don’t mean what was meant by the pioneers of the concept, which was grounded in the technology industry. Their approach is very structured and focuses on alleviating buyers’ pains. There is subsequent literature challenging the idea that people always buy because they have pain; I frankly don’t think it matters.
The point is that when we adopt a solutions focus, we are required to listen and respond to cues from the buyer. This can be a structured process, with a hierarchy of questions to ask, but it needn’t be. However, to do it well you need to know the following:
1. What outcome does this product or service produce?
2. What benefit will the buyer receive?
3. How might it support the buyer’s needs, wishes, aspirations, pain points?
4. Why is this so?
Here’s a tool I created to help a client’s team develop a solutions focus.
Moving vertically, if we couldn’t satisfactorily fill in each box with a credible answer, we asked ourselves if we a) were convinced of the value of the product/service; or b) needed to regroup and refine either the product/service or its value prop—or both.
A note: the OUTCOME and BENEFITS should not be the same. The OUTCOME is what you get. The BENEFITS are the advantages you derive from the OUTCOME.
If you want to use this tool I suggest you do separate versions for every type of buyer you wish to service (i.e., target market). For example, if you think that a technology manager will be your first contact but that the ultimate decision-maker will be the chief technology officer, you need different worksheets to articulate their different needs.
To be more granular, a technology manager may need a simple software tool that you want to sell; however, the chief technology officer will need to take into consideration whether the company’s infrastructure will support the product, what the licensing structure is, what implications that has for other parts of the organization, and so forth. For the manager, the outcome is a job better done; for the CTO it might be the potential for greater productivity, at lesser cost, across five business units.
The better prepared you are to articulate these outcomes, and their benefits, the more effective you will be as a marketer or salesperson.
To be continued: Getting the Value Proposition Right.
