What is Consultative Solution Selling?

I've mostly sold commodities as software products/services in my decade-old sales career and I am new to Solution Selling. This is what I found initially as Solution Selling is a different ballgame experience:

1) Initial Challenge - Most of these solutions in the market are either new or do not have a structured market with a strong inbound Marketing engine. So, the first thing you do and fight is to generate interest in your solution in your prospect's mind. This is primarily because you're offering them something, which they may not have planned to implement or do not require it. There could be several reasons as to why they said "I don't need this" and you need to be prepared with more than enough reasons "Why they need this".

2) Active Focused Listening - Once you break the first barrier of generating interest, you need to be all ears in hearing your customers' existing solutions they're using and their pain points/challenges. If this is not done in an effective way, there is quite a high chance, that you will miss an opportunity, you have put your blood and sweat to generate.

3) The Smart Doctor - The more smart questions you ask during our Qualification Call or the Discovery Call, you will understand where and how you can propose our solution in their existing system. This call has to be primarily focused on hearing their side first - Pros and Cons, and they would give you better insight only when you ask smart questions so they understand you're not going to waste their time. As we know a good and smart Doctor doesn't start writing Rx until he knew what you need vs everything he has to offer.

4) Be Your Prospect's Advocate - Be your customer's advocate first before being a Sales Person trying to sell something. Once you propose your solution to your prospect after understanding their needs/challenges, you would need to fully focus on creating value by putting your solution on the front seat and showing how it can make their life better. The less sales oriented you're and the better you focus on connecting the dots of their pain points/challenges and fill them with the value of your product, you will find they are more aligned to your goals and they will give you further value and time to proceed further. If your prospect gives you time and priority in their calendar, you know you're on the right track.

5) Personalized Approach - During your Demo/Trial/POC, you will show your skills, and your Qualification/Discovery Call's outcomes now will show results. If you're personalizing this segment of the sales process, they will better be aligned with your goals and will be driven per your agenda. In Solution Selling, every opportunity is different and you have to present your solution differently to match the color. This is a challenge, yet this is fun if you are able to explore the fun part of it.

6) Analyse and Penetrate - If you have fought your battle right to this stage, you will build a healthy pipeline and you can move forward with the standard sales cycle. However, in the Solution Selling scenario, the objection of "Why do I need this?" will keep on haunting you and will try to derail your deal. The decision-makers or the check signer will always try to find what is the value of this solution over what they are currently using. Be ready for the war 24*7*365.

The Conclusion - To sum it up, even when as a Sales Person you feel you are making someone's life easy with your solution, you need to understand you're offering a wheel to a person, who has been dragging a cart without one. But, to sell him that wheel, you need to have a very strongly built value proposition as disrupting/challenging someone's existing system with your solution is never ever an easy task. It's not rocket science too, but focusing on the above scenarios will make you overcome the real objections of Solution Selling.

Happy Selling, Champs!