“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”

Whilst most people we meet in business are aware of the importance of 'solution selling' and are quite adamant that it is something they adopt when trying to sell their product or service, in reality it is still something very few do well.

To truly sell the solution that your product or service provides, you first have to apply a bit of lateral thinking to your how your customer thinks:

If the person who hung the pictures above wandered into a DIY shop,

do we think they would be looking for a swanky, cordless, 24 bit, extended

battery life drill or would they be more likely to be looking for the best

implement that will help them quickly, painlessly and cost effectively,

get those pictures they love, on to their wall at home. It's clearly the latter.

So the solution is simple. To personalise the sale (i.e. sell the solution the potential customer needs), the sales person needs information (and or intuition) as to what their needs are. In this example, it's fairly simple to do within a 2 minute conversation...in the business world of course that can be tricky to do.

But the information is out there. The internet and social media are a hive of data and behaviour, meaning intuition can be applied to help understand what the potential customer's pain points and needs are likely to be.

There is an additional and fascinating element to this when selling products/services to other businesses: it is crucial to remember there are at least two (sometimes bordering on separate) set of needs/pain points involved, namely the physical buyer and the organisation itself - sometimes there's even a third entity to factor in as well, the end user (think FD buying a new software system that will be used by the IT Director for example).

The answer as to how best to build the solution that appeals most at each stage of the selling process, still lies with knowledge and information however.

The more you know about the people involved and situation within which they operate, the more tailored your approach can be.

Underpinning all of this should be a consistent sales process that you operate across all of your larger prospects, designed to gather as much salient, thorough information in as cost effective and swift way as possible.

Franklin Wall Solutions help with these and numerous other sales and marketing challenges you may be facing.

If you get chance, send us an email HERE with your questions as to how we would support you or call us anytime on 0161 670 4352 and we'd be delighted to talk through how we help countless business get heard and stand out from the crowd.