Solution Selling With Integrity
The mantra of selling solutions has taken enterprise software by storm and nowhere is this more prevalent than CRM. Honestly, it seems like the more challenging and difficult it is to sell into specific sectors of CRM, the more solution selling is being invoked. All this newfound religion of selling solutions is truly transforming some companies away from being purely product-centric to being problem-centered on their customers’ broken business processes first. The most positive aspect of solution selling pervading the best-of-breed CRM community is that it is starting to make a difference.
These best of breed vendors who are walking the solutions talk also have generated a side benefit no one is really talking about when it comes to solutions selling, and that benefit is integrity. Amazing as it sounds I don’t think enough companies really stop and think about the long-term implications to their integrity of giving themselves the label of being a “solutions seller” without earning it. In fact it’s just as easy for a company to claim they are “customer focused” as being enlightened at solution selling without being either.
What’s unsettling and troublesome is that so many CRM vendors, in trouble with thinning pipelines on the one hand and competitors from the SaaS world nipping at their heels including Salesforce.com at the low-end and mid-range of the market on the other, jump to solutions selling without thinking about how to build integrity in the process. The bottom line is that solution selling for the troubled CRM vendors of today is just like the “Hail Mary” long pass in football often thrown in the last seconds of a half or game, hoping someone on their team will come down with a signed deal in the end zone. One of the many problems with seeing solution selling as the “quick fix” to major problems is that it comes across just like that to prospects and clients alike. The proof comes in the execution, not in landing the deal.
The companies getting the best results from solution selling are doing these tasks not just to get them done, but with a lot of focus and effort behind them to make their solutions trustworthy, and at the heart of solution selling with integrity is the earning of trust:
• Populate roadmaps with products you can WebEx today showing integration. A sure sign a company is solution selling with integrity is when they have reality-based roadmaps. Every application, whether licensed or hosted, can he demonstrated on WebEx and the systems integrated with can also be seen anywhere on the planet, anytime, through a simple WebEx window. That’s impressive, it’s solution selling and it’s making many companies practicing this worthy of trust. Finally, prospects say to themselves, a vendor who “gets it” and shows me what is shipping. Not to belabor the point, but you have to respect Steve Job’s quote “Real artists ship”, reminding his staff that delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and killer designs.
• Solution selling is not an excuse to jack up services fees to 10X or higher of license costs. There are those software companies that will announce solutions selling as their core focus with much fanfare only to surprise prospects and clients both with a revamped pricing model that takes services costs through the roof. Instead of focusing on selling more services with a solution selling label on it, try to deliver more services at the same license-to-services ratio, earning trust in the process. The bottom line is that by doing this you will be way ahead of competitors who will look to solution selling as a strategy to drive up deal sizes.
• Modify Sales’ comp plans to reflect selling solutions long-term over just flipping deals. This is by far the toughest step for many companies to take because it directly impacts revenue in the short-term, but its necessary to give sales reps the chance to go deep into accounts and look for problems to solve rather than just the next license sale needed. Revising comp plans to reward the annuity stream of revenue from a solution also solves a major sales management issue, which is turnover.
• Quit dating your customers and marry them. There’s a big difference here as one is transitory and the other is long-term (except in Nevada), one is focused on seeing what works with little investment and the other is a complete investment.
• Making a strategy contribution means more than just trimming costs. The best solutions sold end up as strategies that create value continually for clients. If there is a best practices thread in all this, it is this: solution selling that creates value are what it’s really all about. Sure, software gets sold to just do sales force automation, service management, call center operations, and even cross-channel coordination. But none of these applications matter long-term in any company until they attain strategy status, and create value in the form of measured results.
Bottom line: Solution selling starts when you find a way to become critical to your customers’ roadmaps, strategies, plans and future. Look for those mile markets and populate your CRM system with them, and you’ll be truly selling solutions with integrity.
