Despite a stated commitment to selling solutions, the IT industry continues to be plagued by a product-centric focus. Solit SA director Victoria Vaksman identifies 10 critical success factors to solution design, selling and delivery.
The IT market has evolved through a number of phases: one of these has been the purported move to delivering solutions rather than product sales. Yet, for all the proclaimed focus on solutions, it is apparent to even a casual market observer that salespeople, driven by the need to meet quotas and stiff sales targets, still approach customer engagement situations with a product mindset.
It's not hard to see why. People are given responsibility for a particular product or set of products, and have to get these to market one way or the other. On this basis, in a highly competitive industry, they're going to view customer problems as a forum for rolling out their products with all their "market-leading, unique, state-of-the-art" attributes and functionality.
This just won't cut it any more, though; customers have been oversold, undersold, sold to incorrectly. They've had products delivered and implemented that couldn't possibly fit their requirements. Product square pegs have been driven into corporate round holes, with both supplier and customer being compromised as a consequence.
True solution selling is a far cry from what we see so often in the market. Here are 10 critical success factors to ensure you deliver exactly the right solution to your customer.
1. Listen rather than talk. The adage of two ears and one mouth is wholly appropriate here! Only through listening can you begin to understand what the client is trying to say to you. We have all seen salespeople who are so determined to impart their message that they have forgotten about listening. Listen to what the customer is saying, what they're NOT saying, and study the interplay between the participants in the company. Deep insights can be garnered in this fashion. Proactive hearing equals listening.
2. Solution selling is all about empathy: the ability to put yourself in your customer's shoes, and to understand precisely what it is they are experiencing. From this empathy comes the appropriate insight and understanding which can lead to solution selling. Empathy comes with understanding, and understanding comes with hearing.
3. Don't enter a client engagement with preconceptions. Just because your kitbag contains a particular variety of solutions and offerings, don't approach the customer engagement with a desire to steer the encounter in a direction of your choice. You're bound to disappoint both yourself and the customer.
4. Qualify a sales opportunity as early as possible. Solution selling is tough, and you need to know early on if you're wasting each other's time. Qualify each opportunity with a merciless rigour.
5. Be prepared to walk away from a deal. Know your limitations. If you simply cannot fulfil the client's needs, say so and point him in the right direction. He'll remember your actions long after the initial engagement, and we're all in the market for a long time.
6. Having said that, we can't be infinite generalists, so the proposed solution recommendation must come from your limited kitbag, which might contain 12 items as opposed to your competition's five. Only if the proposed solution cannot be found in your kitbag of existing and potential offerings and services should you walk away.
7. Get to know everything about your customer's business: prospects, customers, competitors, macro and micro pressures and issues, targets, constraints, market leaders, key staff ... from this will come the strategic understanding that leads to the development of an ideal solution. From such deep strategic understanding comes the ability to partner, and from partnering come greater sales opportunities and improved margins.
8. Be prepared for longer selling cycles. But, if you get it right, the upside is long-term relationships - and people buy more solutions from people they trust; so the investment in time up-front drives an account that you can grow with.
9. Deliver, deliver, deliver. The IT market is littered with examples of products that were sold and not delivered appropriately. Companies that deliver just what they said they would become legends; imagine if you under-promise and over-deliver!
10. Be ready to sell more. There's not a customer who won't want to buy more from you if you've got to step nine!
When you focus on fulfilling what the client really needs, rather than structuring an offering based on what you have to sell, everything falls into place.
To conclude, solution selling can be summarised with a Biblical paradox: if with your customer you will be last, then ultimately you will be first.
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