The death of solution selling
the main sales trend in 2021

For years the dominant qualification process for decision-makers was based on three main criteria:

These criteria are easy to establish, and they have been used as a scorecard to forecast the likelihood of a potential purchase. But there are two main issues with these criteria today: they do not take into account the urgency of the decision-makers and how fast they want to move, and they don't work for a new product that hasn't been purchased in the past to establish a precedent.

So the more powerful question is whether a prospect has the need to change rather than just the potential to buy. The need to change, in other words motivation, can come from external factors, such as new regulations or industry standards, or internal requirements, for example, leadership pressure or high employee turnover. Even without a defined purchasing process, the existing pressure to change will make the deal happen much faster.

In order to benefit from the "need to change" qualification criteria, a salesperson must establish a credible relationship with the buyer and learn how to ask the right questions.

With solution selling, a salesperson aims to establish relationships with an insider who can coach him or her on the internal processes and on how to deliver sales faster (this insider is also called a coach or an advocate). In an ideal world, the insider shares relevant insights about the company, connects the salesperson to decision-makers and helps prepare a tailored value-proposition for each decision-maker to influence them. But this kind of insider doesn't exist in the real world (or at least is very hard to find!) and a salesperson is usually more like a lonely lamb surrounded by a heard of wolves from the purchasing department.

In solution selling, it is not only challenging for a salesperson to sell its product or service; it is equally challenging for a customer to purchase the solution. In many cases, a customer doesn't buy the same solutions every day. That is why he or she will not necessarily know who are the key stakeholders, decision-makers and what is the approval process. Besides, one buyer might struggle to mobilise all the departments internally and get their consensus and final approval without the support of the salesperson. A salesperson is much better positioned to coach the prospect on how to navigate the buying process, work with potential internal objections and roadblocks. A salesperson sees how similar sales are being closed or rejected across many organisations, identifies regular patterns and can propose different internal sales strategies. With this knowledge, the salesperson can anticipate challenges in a buying process and resolve them before they even arise. So instead of asking a buyer to coach the salesperson on how to sell to them, a salesperson can coach the buyer with insights on how to purchase.

The same logic applies to the implementation process. In many cases, a positive purchasing decision will come only when the key decision-makers are confident in the success of future implementation. The salesperson plays a crucial role here by also providing valuable implementation advice, notably on common traps to avoid.