Sales Strategies – The Power of Solution Development

If you want to have some fun, try this powerful exercise. Think of the person who, in the entire world, loves you the most … the one person who sees none of your faults and whose love for you is unconditional. It may be your mother, your spouse, or a significant other. The next time you see them, within a 1 minute period of time, tell them, "You need to do this. And in addition, you need to do that. And also you need to do this one other thing." If you happen to be standing in front of them at the time, to make your point even more emphatic, point your finger at them when telling them what they need to do for you. After ducking to avoid being hit by a sharp flying object, please call me and tell me how it went.

by Bernard M. Aller
Managing Partner,
CustomerCentric Selling™-Mid Atlantic in SalesVantage.com

While this exercise may seem silly, I am amazed by the number of sales people who, when a prospect tells them about a purchase that they are considering, respond with, "You need to look at my product." Think about it … if the person who loves you the most won’t take a "you need", what kind of reaction will you get from a prospect who doesn’t know you from Adam and has probably had bad experiences with sale people in the past?

Two Types of Sales People

Based on my experiences over the years, there are two basic types of sales people. The typical salesperson has a tendency to offer opinions during a sales call. Their natural eagerness to sell their product pushes them to try and introduce every feature of their product that may, in any way, address the perceived problem that the prospect may have. The challenge here is that unsolicited opinions have a tendency to invite contradiction … not exactly the reaction for which the sales person was looking. In addition, by offering his own unsolicited opinion, the sales person shows little regard for the opinion of the prospect which leads to one-sided conversations. The typical sales person has a tendency to rely on presentations and standardized demos hoping that something that is shown will pique the interest of the prospect. I call this a "spray and pray" or "show up and throw up" approach to selling. To me, this approach to sales demonstrates a company or personal perspective rather than take into account the perspective of the prospect.

On the other hand, the natural, or as I like to think, the professional sales person, leads the conversation with the prospect with questions about how the prospect is currently accomplishing the tasks that they want to improve. Good questions invite participation and align both the prospect and sales person. The ability to conduct such conversations permit you to understand the problems of the prospect before you ask to be understood. The natural sales person approaches each individual prospect from the prospect’s perspective and holds their own personal interests in abeyance until they are sure that they align with those of the prospect.

What Are You Offering?

Let’s try another exercise. Take a look at your website and all of the marketing collateral that has been prepared for your use. If the content is anything like what is seen in the vast majority of marketing materials, it is very feature-oriented with phrases that all but guarantee that whatever the prospect’s problem may be, this product can solve it. Look at the copy … do words and phrases like "fully integrated, cutting edge, seamless" appear anywhere? Are words like "robust, state of the art, elegant, and dynamic" used? What do they mean? What are the odds that your prospect has read or heard similar claims from the sales people that have preceded you? Why should they believe you? If you talk and sound like every other sales person that the prospect has spoken to in the past, there’s a very good chance that you’ll be treated like every other sales person and, with a little luck, politely be shown the door.

Rather than lead with how hot your product or service might be, consider offering the prospect the capability to solve their own problem and reach their own goal. Why not attempt to help the prospect build a vision of themselves already in possession of the capability, and using it, to achieve a specific goal or objective? Why try this approach? First of all, the current way is not producing the results that you want. Secondly, and for this we can thank wise old Ben Franklin. He said that "People are best convinced by ideas that they themselves discover." Little did old Ben know that when he gave us this very powerful phrase, he was describing the Solution Development process.

Helping the Prospect Visualize How the Product is Used

Why bother? For those of you who do not have a PhD in Behavioral or Social Psychology, consider these two axioms:

* People buy things for emotional reasons and then attempt to justify the decision with reason and logic
* People buy from people who empower them to achieve their goals and objectives

The person making a buying decision, or referring you to someone who can, has to develop some sort of emotional tie to the capability that you are trying to sell. If you don’t believe this, think about the purchase of any automobile over the price of $25,000. Why buy a BMW 3 series when a 6 cylinder Honda Accord is arguably every bit as well made automobile. Whether the owners admit it or not, the major reason that people buy Porsches, Mercedes, and Ferraris is emotional … they’re hot! … they have sex appeal. The engineering, resale value, and performance are secondary. While you may be able to close an opportunity purely on logical reasons, bypassing the development of any emotional tie leaves your efforts very vulnerable to competitors.

If you are fortunate enough to have an active prospecting program and be the first person to help the buyer actively see themselves solving problems and attaining a goal or objective with the capability that you provided, the odds are overwhelmingly in favor of you, and your company, moving to the top of the competitor list.

Solution Development – Creating Potential Capabilities

Having had the great fortune to come in contact with many wise people in the past, I remember that my very first sales manager told me a simple truth that is just as valid today as it was so many years ago:

Sales is, to a large extent, nothing more than hurt and rescue Before you can help the buyer create a vision of themselves already in possession of, and using, the capability to achieve a goal that you can provide, some set-up work should be done to make the vision more emotional and vivid. First comes the "hurt".

To create a vivid, emotional picture, consider setting it up with a series of questions that help to identify, and quantify, what problem, or series of problems, is causing the buyer to look for a better way to achieve their goal. Develop a series of open-ended questions that, while thinly veiled, are biased to the capability that you and your product can provide. Ask the buyer how they are accomplishing the task today. Ask how much time it takes to accomplish that task … how many people it takes … if any overtime has been required … what bad things happen as a result of the status quo process. In short, attempt to determine what I call "the cost of doing nothing" … what resources are being utilized to accomplish the task today if no changes are made. This is a very important step as the information that you discover while asking these open ended questions will provide you with the ability to develop a cost justification/ROI model later in the sales cycle. After you have the prospective buyer thanking you for rubbing salt in his wound and reminding him, perhaps for the first time, about the depth, and cost, of the problem, it’s now time for the "rescue".

As for those sales people who are, in reality, frustrated actors and actresses, this should be your finest hour. Utilizing the information provided when asking the series of open ended questions, create an emotional, "visual" usage scenario of the buyer actually using the capability that you can provide. The format is really quite simple:

* Event – the circumstance causing the buyer to need the capability that you can provide

* Question – setting up a query

* Player – Who or what will take the action

* Action – describe how the feature will would be used in words that a non-technical user would understand

The wording should be specific enough so that the buyer understands "how". For example, let’s use a situation where there is a need to compile data for reporting purposes and, at the current time, the data is stored in multiple databases, in multiple formats, including paper. The time it currently takes to accomplish the task is 3-4 days utilizing 2 full time employees. Utilizing the Solution Development format:

* Event – When needing to compile data that currently resides in differing electronic formats, including paper …

* Question – What if there was a way that your …

* Player – Research Associate …

* Action – could simultaneously search multiple databases, regardless of format, harvest all desired data, and place it into a single database bucket resulting in a reduction from 3-4 days effort of 2 people to less than 1 hour by 1 person?

The key point to remember is that when the buyer understands the usage scenario, it becomes a capability that they themselves discovered … just as old Ben Franklin predicted.

While it is so easy to jump in with both feet and lead with your product when the buyer first mentions a problem, taking the time to diagnose the underlying business issue driving the search prior to providing a prescription automatically differentiates the natural – the professional sales person from the competition. Remember … it’s not about you. Sales people who produce consistently positive results understand that the more time they take to diagnose the problems of the buyer, the better they will be in helping the buyer develop a vision of themselves already in possession, and using, the seller’s capability to attain their goals and objective. When the sales person empowers the buyer to achieve their goals and objectives, a successful sale will most always follow.
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Bernard Aller is the Managing Partner CustomerCentric Selling™-Mid Atlantic. CustomerCentric Selling™ provides the Sales and Marketing team with a repeatable, scalable sales process that is designed to align with the way sophisticated organizations buy. He may be contacted at 410-730-4747 or [email protected].

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