SALES AUTOMATION
Articles
What is solution selling and how to use it effectively
Solution selling can be the key to your business making sales, generating revenue and growing in its market. Take the approach to your customers that you are offering them a product or service of value that will be a solution to their problem. This article will look at what solution selling is and how you can do It effectively.
What is solution selling?
Solution selling is when a business presents a product or service that is mapped to the customer’s challenge, which will act as a solution for them. The business is acting as the solution to the customer’s query. Businesses that solution sell is not selling products but selling solutions. This is a great way for businesses to sell to customers as it comes with multiple benefits including trust building, long-term relationships, and an improved brand image.
The best time to use solution selling
The businesses that will have the best success with solution selling offer a customizable product or service that can be altered for the client’s needs. This will help the customers feel like they are getting a more personalised service to help them with their unique challenges. You should have a good understanding of your unique selling proposition and how it can act as a solution for customers. Discover how you can make your unique selling proposition key for sales.
The benefits of solution selling
Invaluable benefits your business will get from solution selling:
Long-term customer relationships – Customers will have a better relationship with your business as you will be offering them a more personalised service.
Improved brand image – Your business will have an improved brand image by providing helpful solutions to customer problems.
Get a better understanding of customers – Solution selling focuses on understanding your customers and their pain points, helping you get a better understanding of your customers which can lead to more effective sales strategies and focused marketing.
Sell higher-value products and services – Customers will see solution selling as a business selling high-value products and services. This is because the product or service will solve their problem acting as a solution for them, increasing the perceived value of the offering.
Challenges with solution selling
Despite the benefits that businesses will get from solution selling, there are some challenges that have to be considered:
Time-consuming process – Because solution selling entails a business providing a personalised service to customers, significant time will need to be contributed to learning more about the customer’s situation. It can take multiple calls or meetings to fully understand a customer’s context, meaning a business will use a lot of time and resources with this method.
Challenging to plan for – Like any sales strategy, a planned approach will be very beneficial. However, solution selling is challenging to plan for as you will find out so much important information as you interact with them. Your sales representatives should have a good understanding of your customer persona to be able to segment potential customers from each other as the solution-selling process is underway. These customers should be segmented by factors like industry, to see how well they fit with your product or service.
Plan your solution selling
This section will look into the things you must consider to effectively solution sell to boost your revenue and grow your business.
- Understand what you are offering customers
Having a good understanding of the product or service that you are offering customers is a crucial factor in being able to do effective solution selling. You must know your product’s unique selling point, and how it can act as a solution for your customers.
- Understand your customers
You should understand your customers, as knowing their needs and requirements will help you better prepare for interactions with them. Knowing your customers’ pain points will help you link your product or service to their context and better present how it will act as a solution to them. Understand your customers through:
- Previous customer data
- Questionnaires
- Interviews
- Market reports
- Social media
Furthermore, read about sales psychology to better understand how your customers think.
- Plan your questions
You should have multiple questions planned to ask your leads to find out more about their context and how you can help. There should be a mix of broad questions about the customer’s situation, and more specific questions about their context to help you identify how your product or service will help them. This is a part of the sales qualification process and is crucial to making successful deals. Some questions you can ask are:
- What is the problem you are currently facing?
- What time frame are you trying to solve this problem?
- What budget are you trying to solve this problem in?
- Are you currently looking for other places to solve this problem?
The solution-selling steps
A successful solution-selling process will follow these steps:
- Generate a lead – A lead will be generated by the marketing department, e.g., a lead generated from social media.
- Qualify a lead – A lead will be generated by the marketing team and the sales department will now interact with that lead to see if they are a good fit for the business.
- Identify the customer’s needs – Find out more about the customer, identifying their needs and pain points. This will help you express how your product or service will help this customer and provide a solution to their problem.
- Express the value of your solution – Now is the time to show the customer the value of the product or service that you are offering them. This should be presented to the customer where you focus the benefits of your product or service to be in line with the challenges of your challenges.
- Give them an offer – Present the customer with an offer for the solution. Try to emphasize the good return on investment (ROI) that the customer will get from the solution.
- Close the deal – Finish with a mutually agreed deal with the next steps clearly mapped out.
Strengthen your solution selling with TEB
Strengthen your social selling, win more sales and generate more revenue with TEB, the sales automation CRM software. TEB will increase your data visibility, give you a better understanding of customers and streamline your sales process to help your business reach new heights. Key features of TEB:
- Generate custom reports – Drill down on your data with custom reports to learn more about your customers and sales process to make insightful decisions about strategy
- TEB lead funnels – Organise your leads with filters and funnels to prioritize the leads that are right for your business
- TEBs customer storyboard – View your customer’s entire buyer journey in the form of a storyboard to get a better understanding of your customers and your sales strategy
- Track your sales team’s performance – See what team members are performing the most efficiently and winning the most deals to alter your sales strategy and support your representatives.
Make solution selling successful for you, book a free quick demo with us where we will show you live how TEB will boost your sales, increase your revenue and drive your growth.
Explore TEBillion Insights
Value Proposition – How to get it right
- 319
