Coming from a technical background, one of the hardest hurdles I had to overcome was the fear of being a sales person. This is not intended to offend any professional sales people out there, it is simply a preconceived notion I had of the sales process and what sales people did. Perhaps this was influenced by some of the shady “old school” sales people I ran into throughout my life. You know the “types” the fast talking high pressure folks who are less concerned about your needs and more concerned about making top sales person of the month. While I may not like this approach, admittedly some people want to be “sold.” At the end of the day, everyone has bills and we all need to put food on the table.
When it comes to selling, the most important thing to realize is potential clients are contacting you because they have a need. Your job as a professional, in your field, is to determine what those needs are and come up with the Best Solution for their Unique needs. There is a reason I emphasized those three words and this is to point out customers need to feel their needs are being met and you have their best interests in mind. This is where my earlier article on Relationship Marketing comes in, but Solution Selling expands on that and is intended more as a tool I used to get over the Fear of Selling.
LISTEN
As I mentioned in Relationship Marketing, listening is a very important skill to being successful in business. Even more important is understanding and using what was said to adapt your offerings to the unique requirements of your client. After all, you are not selling a product or service, you are selling a solution.
Sometimes the needs of your client are not necessarily evident. Take, for example, a real life example from one of my clients. I own an alarm company and most of my business is installing and monitoring of alarms. I was having coffee with a client and she mentioned how difficult it was to find her way down the stairs in their 100 plus year old home. You see, back when the home was built, the basement was only used for storage and therefor lighting down the stairs was not an issue, in addition, the headroom going down the stairs was so tight, a light would be an obstruction. She also often went down there with her hands full and turning on a light switch, if it was even there, would be difficult.
The Solution – In this case was able to install low voltage LED Strip lights underneath the stairwell nosing (The part of the step which overhangs the step below). Instead of a light switch, I installed flex floor sensors on the stairs, which detected someone stepping down on the first and last step. Voila, a simple yet effective solution which made my client very happy. Furthermore, this resulted in several other customers switching their alarm monitoring over to my company, simply because they wanted to have a similar set-up
Understand what you are Selling
In order to sell custom solutions, it is critical for you and your staff to understand your product and service inside out. Not just the end result of what it does, but how it gets there. Just as with how a floor sensor works and can be set up to trigger a light, the customer does not need to know the exact details of how it works, but you and your staff do. This will help solve problems traditional simple product / service sellers will not be able to compete against.
Don't Confuse your Client with the Details
Much of this will depend on the technical acumen of your client, but it is important to remember your client is contacting you because they do not know how to do what you do. This is extremely important when dealing with the tech sector where tech-centric solution sellers may often get carried away with the little details. For the most part the client only wants to know about the end result. In the stair lighting example, “Yes, I can provide you with a hands free solution to your stair lighting problem” was all I needed to say. Anything else would have potentially caused confusion and lost the deal because the client assumed it would be too difficult and messy to do in a completely finished home.
Know your Worth
This is probably one of the most difficult things for me to overcome and in talking to others, I am not alone. When it comes to selling solutions over simple products and services, price often becomes less of an issue, simply because of the weight the solution takes off the shoulders of your client. While the parts may be inexpensive, in order to be successful, your need to strive to not undervalue your knowledge and expertise. It is also important to not overprice yourself and end up ripping your client off.
Solution Based Ad Content
The Solution Selling approach can also be used in advertising. While most ads will simply list the products and services one provides, a more successful ad campaign will target the actual needs of the future client. This approach is especially effective in online marketing, where potential clients use the internet to find solutions to their problems.
Where a less effective website will post meaningless pictures of products surrounded by keywords, a successful website will contain useful information which will not only increase search engine awareness, but will also increase consumer confidence in the ability of the company to solve their problem. Content based Search Engine Optimization is another topic I will get into in my article on Content Based Search Engine Optimization
Successful ad campaigns do not necessarily need to include pricing, as this only attracts customers based on price, which is fine if you are only looking at one-off sales. This is not to say price cannot be an effective motivator, just realize those who compete on price alone will always have to be looking over their shoulder for someone who will undercut them. That being said, there is always the “lost leader” or “bait and switch” tactics used by some big box stores, but these tactics do little to build consumer loyalty. True loyalty is built on trust and confidence.