Certainly it can be easier to solution sell when you are selling solutions. Instead of focusing on a prospective buyer, many salespeople spout lists of their products or services features and benefits. Nearly 10 years ago, the influential bestseller solution selling literally rewrote the rules for selling bigticket, longcycle products. Its the book that started a revolution of leading sales by uncovering the entire landscape of your buyer and sprinkling in sales content along the way. Insight selling is the new solution selling forbes. Bosworth is a sales trainer and consultant who lectures at the stanford graduate school of business and at a stanford marketing program for technology firms. Dec 06, 2010 consequently, buyside executives are conditioned to block out generic solution selling noise. The board is concerned about our industry reputation based on feedback from. Cheggs textbook solutions go far behind just giving you the answers. Now the new solution selling shows how the same principles and process may be applied to any business relationship in any industry. A must read for anyone in sales or business in general.
Sep 20, 2005 jeff thull is president and ceo of prime resource group. Sales training and sales coaching programs based on 5 critical selling skills and a structured sales process. Close the value gap, increase margins, and win the complex sale dearborn trade publishing, 2005 and mastering the complex sale 2003. Creating buyers in difficult selling markets, was brilliant, and full of great. Solution selling mike bosworth this is the book that put mike on the map. Cv servicios managing our sales in a downturn economy develop sales materials and collaterals aligned with solution selling approach. In nearly every case that we have seen, merging products and services into solutions requires a change to the business model and the.
For starters, determining what solutions are required is based on value, not the features and benefits of the product or. Approaching a difficult situation problemoriented might be helpful if we attempt to avoid similar problems or mistakes in the future, but when it comes to solving the problem we simply waste large amounts of. If the value of your product or service is small, you can carry on i have spent many unnecessary minutes on books written on a blemished premise. Once upon a time, that approach was novel, but in todays changing. Our work with a wide variety of companies suggests that solutions selling does offer a considerable prize, but that it does not come easy. Solution selling is a sales methodology that became popular in the 1980s. Identifying a customer need essentially entails determining what exact need your customer has as it relates to your products ability to solve the need. This book solution selling captures the strongman process perfectly a must buy for any salesbusiness professional out there. The new solution selling expands the classic texts cases, examples, and situations and sharpens its focus on streamlining the sales process to achieve greater success in fewer steps and a shorter time frame. In the 4 pricing methods, we discussed how the value comparison method is often the best way to support a high price on your offer. Since the publication of my first book in 1986, value added selling techniques, ive invested ninety percent of my speaking time spreading the good news about valueadded selling to audiences all over the world. By focusing on the positive resources and skills a solution focused approach can enhance the workplace, school, home, or community experience for all members of that environment. This technique makes sense because in order to present solutions, you first must learn your customers needs. The solution selling methodology isnt just for the sales team.
Another common belief is that the salesperson needs to follow a difficult dialogue or script, as solution selling is believed to be more comprehensive than their selling style. Creating buyers in difficult selling markets, was brilliant, and full of. This resultsbased book will show you how to improve your sales performance by first understanding your customers challengesand then providing. Access a free summary of the new solution selling, by keith m. Solution selling will help advance your ability to connect with business owners and focus on what matters to them the most making their business run better, grow faster, and make more money. He presented his sales process as a one day workshop to xerox corporation in 1982. Question based selling qbs is a commonsense approach to sales, based on the theory that what salespeople askand how they askis more important than anything they will ever say. Keep in mind that buyers today are more informed than they were when this book was written. Our action selling and customer relationship professional workshops are customized solutions focused on longterm reinforcement. Selling textbooks online pays you more than college bookstores. After reading this book, salespeople and sales managers will be able to use a welltested model that guides them through the process of selling.
This results based book will show you how to improve your sales performance by first understanding your customers challengesand then providing intelligent, accessible, and fieldproven solutions to those challenges. Besides yourself, who else is impacted by this pain and how. Others prefer to think about possible solutions that help them to solve a problem solution focused thinking. Jan 19, 2018 develop proficiency at solutionsellinga customerfocused approach to salesand learn why it is critical when selling large deals and sophisticated products and services. This book explains in detail what goes on during a sale and offers profound insight to the art of selling complex products. To access the solution selling module, follow the steps below. It is true that selling is just a simple name for the complex mental wars that happens between the buyer and the seller. His or her goal is a highquality decision based on an honest, thorough, and rational evaluation of the correlation between the customers problem and the sellers solution. The hardest thing about b2b selling today is that customers dont need you the way they used to.
The breakthrough process used by more than 500,000 sales professionals worldwide. Price solutions based on total business value delivered, not component features. After reading this book, salespeople and sales managers will be able. In recent decades sales reps have become adept at discovering customers needs and selling them. Transactional selling is focused solely on hitting revenue targets. Solutions based selling means providing answers to problems. Instead, they simply trick out their products as solutions and. Check out the below ebook for how to create a solution selling ppt that closes deals. It enables sel when products or services are hard to describe, intangible, have long sell cycles, or are expensive, chances are theyre difficult to sell. While traditional solution selling is still dead, the changing b2b landscape has given rise to a new bestinbreed sales methodology.
A solution is the answer to a problem and therefore, before you can sell a solution, you have to identify a problem. The ultimate master of professional selling explains how to sell more, more easily, more quickly, and to more people not to be missed. Aug 30, 2012 a study done by us based sirisdecisions in november 2011 showed that decision makers complete upwards of 70% of the purchase making process before calling in salespeople. Based on an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps across multiple industries and geographies, the challenger sale argues that classic relationship building is a losing approach, especially when it comes to selling complex, largescale businesstobusiness solutions.
In an hbr article, ceb and hbr explain the nature of the shift. The solution selling fieldbook helps you integrate the plans nutsandbolts techniques into your own daytoday practices, and immediately gain access to key decision makers, diagnose buyers business issues, and increase topline sales. The revolutionary sales process that is changing the way people sell kindle edition by eades, keith m download it once and read it on your kindle device, pc, phones or tablets. How the best connect and win in high stakes sales september 2006, the prime solution. Jun 20, 2007 solution based selling is a term that has been used since the 90s and describes a selling approach that was a shift for many organizations. This resultsbased book will show you how to improve your sales performance by first understanding your customers challengesand then providing intelligent, accessible, and fieldproven solutions to those challenges. Traditional solution selling is based on the premise that salespeople should lead with openended questions designed to surface recognized customer needs. This book helps one strategize his selling and predict customer behaviors.
Selling is no longer about psychological games and forceful personalities. Yes, you can solution sell without selling solutions. Sales expert, john butel, shares his tips on how to sell solutions successfully. Gill wagner is a local sales consultant based out of st. Sandler enterprise selling program sales sandler training. Delivering customer outcomes versus selling products. Free shipping and pickup in store on eligible orders. Eades and 20,000 other business, leadership and nonfiction books on. This results based book will show you how to improve your sales performance by first understanding your customers challenges and then providing intelligent, accessible, and fieldproven solutions to those. The new solution selling focuses on streamlining the proven solution selling process and quickly differentiating both oneself and ones products from the competition while decreasing the time spent between initial qualifying and a successful, profitable close.
How selling a solution is different from selling a product. There are thousands of sales books, but which are best for you. Develop a training program involving regular and onthejob learning. We will tailor our products and services so that they fit your reality precisely. As such, any silos or archaic compensation strategies that impede solution selling. Why executives dont respond to solution selling customerthink. The answers to those questions clarify the customers needs for the customer as well as the salesperson and enable the salesperson to offer a solution to those needs. If you wish to become a solutions provider and business advisor to your clients, you must first uncover the problem or problems and help educate the buyer to them.
I observe that there are two extremes of selling emotional selling and rational selling. It is because salespeople are so busy selling, they didnt give customers a chance to buy. Bookscouters buyback price comparison helps you sell your books for the best price. Since youre probably not going to read all 389,164 of them, i thought it might be useful to identify the ten that should be in every business library. Mike bosworth founded solution selling in 1983, based on his experiences at xerox corporation the xerox spin selling pilot project began licensing affiliates in 1988. Solutions selling has been all the rage over the last 5 to 10 years, yet 75 percent of the companies that attempt to offer solutions fail to return the cost of their investment. He began teaching solution selling as an independent consultant in 1982. Spin selling is a sales methodology book for those who work in companies that make large b2b sales. Nov 03, 2011 we use your linkedin profile and activity data to personalize ads and to show you more relevant ads. It enables sellers to make the way they sell as big an advantage as their product or service. Compare textbook buyback prices from over 35 online companies with a single search. The solution selling matrix is a perfect tool to define an initial solution for addressing the pains of a prospect moving into system integration what is causing you to have this pain. In recent decades sales reps have become adept at discovering customers needs.
Eades and 20,000 other business, leadership and nonfiction books on getabstract. But perhaps the best example of solution selling is the book itself it solution sells the concept of solution selling, from catching our attention, demonstrating that a problem exists, asking us questions, and finally prescribing a solution. Customer service training built on customer loyalty through internal alignment. Solution selling refers to the philosophy or practice of uncovering a customers pain points and then providing products and services that address the underlying business problem. Solution selling training teaches sales professionals exactly how to prepare a customer focused introduction that customers will find compelling so that they meaningfully engage early in the sales cycle. The new b2b sales process is enormously stressful for buyers. Value based selling is the process of understanding and reinforcing the reasons why your offer is valuable to the purchaser. The revolutionary sales process that is changing the way people sell by keith m. Mike bosworth has the best understanding of sales process in corporate america. In needs based or consultative selling, the salesperson establishes what those needs are through a series of openended, relationshipbuilding questions. Mike bosworth is probably the smartest guy i ever met in the sales training world.
Valueadded selling is more than a book, a speaker, a seminar, or this years management theme. Book based sellutions you cant teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar by david sandler. Pdf selling solutions by selling value researchgate. Strengths based selling gives salespeople practical, handson advice. After all, the goal of the prime solution salesperson is not to get a signed order. A salespersons selling strategies will differ, depending on the type of relationship the buyer and seller either have or want to move toward. Amazon contains 340,737 book titles containing the word sales and 48,427 containing the word selling. Consultative selling, while also interested in hitting revenue targets, aims to do that by helping customers succeed. Solution selling is a type and style of sales and selling methodology. Oct 29, 2007 mike bosworth is probably the smartest guy i ever met in the sales training world. Parts of this post adapted from the solution selling fieldbook 2005, mcgrawhill, isbn 9780071456074 by eades, touchstone and sullivan imagine for a moment that you have come down with the flu. Solution selling is the most comprehensive sales and sales management process available today. Solution selling created new rules for onetoone selling of hardtosell items.
Ses provides both a clear methodology and an easytograsp crossfunctional vocabulary. Learn what solution selling is and how to get started with this methodology. This lively and liberating book will teach you to do just that. Product and service selling is based on the salespersons ability to uncover a buyers need and then introduce the benefits of a product or service that will most closely and effectively satisfy that need. Rather than just promoting an existing product, the salesperson focuses on the customers pains and addresses the. Aug 26, 2017 you can solution sell without a single packaged solution in your product line. The sandler enterprise selling program ses gives organizations who sell into complex accounts a quantifiable enterprise selling system that can be launched, measured, tested, and amplified at any step of the process. To again answer the question posed by the title of this post. Solution selling is a process to take the guesswork out of difficulttosell, intangible products and services. Louis, mo, where he was recently voted one of the top 100 people in st. Integrity selling selling solutions and training for. This chapter embeds the sales transformation into a broader change of business logic, analyzes the value based solution selling from the value proposition communication and differentiation method. Instead, the book not only gives valuable information on the sales process but it also gives reliable examples.
I use it to authenticate my ideas on valuesolutions selling, and the sales management practices in the book are very helpful, and easily built into a companies. Solution selling has a salesperson or sales team use a sales process that is a problemled rather than productled approach to determine if and how a change in a product could bring specific improvements that are desired by the customer. Consultative selling stands in stark contrast to transactional selling. True, solution selling has a longer selling cycle simply because there is more listening and probing taking place. Solution selling is the best methodology ive seen for placing emphasis on business issues rather than product. The new solution selling is not your run of the mill business book that typically renames and regurgitates business practices that have been in place for years. Thats why youre finding it harder to get a meeting or struggling to sustain the conversation with a customer executive. Solutionbased thinking can be applied to any problems or situations you encounter at work, at home, in the community. Solution selling is simply an approach to how you sell your product. Solution based selling will also teach sales professionals how to prepare questions to identify high priority customer. Since solution sales demand a customers need, the first step involved in solution sales is to either identify, uncover or create a need for your customer. These classic sales books should be in every business library.