3 Steps to Meaningful Insights – Your Solution Selling Advantage

Meaningful Insights – Your solution selling advantage
Do you have what it takes to be a world-class solution seller?  If you want to have a solution selling advantage over your competition, you should find our where you stand.

Customers Want Meaningful Insights
If you have been in the sales field for awhile or if you have recently attended a solution selling training program, you know customers are looking for compelling insights about their most pressing problems.  This may be simply stated, but it’s not so easy to create a solution selling advantage.

How to Get Meaningful Insights
Providing the kind of value to your customers that gives you a competitive advantage takes a strong combination of careful research, superior communication skills, and strong business acumen.

3 Steps to Meaningful Insights – Your Solution Selling Advantage
These are three requirements for solution selling success.

1. Invest the Time Required to Research
   You must be willing to do your homework and do pre-call sales planning. Never walk into a sales opportunity until you fully understand your prospect’s industry, their business, and the role that they play.

   First, read all you can about your customer’s industry, business, customers, and competition.  Get a clear sense of priorities, how they present themselves, and what makes their business tick strategically, culturally, and financially.

   Second, utilize your network to learn all you can about their strategy, culture, people, organizational structure, and your potential buyer. Reach out to contacts who may have helpful knowledge and meet with employees who are willing to help you understand what matters most.

   Remember, preparation equals success.  And win rates at target clients significantly outperform rates for clients who are not a good fit for your solutions.

2. Ensure Clear and Compelling Communication
   When you’re ready to meet with your target buyer, be ready to ask relevant, compelling, and insightful sales questions.  Then be ready to actively listen. This is your opportunity to identify what matters most, link your solution to their priorities, and articulate how you can help them succeed better than the competition.

   Effective communication helps to build a trusting relationship.  Be courteous.  Be curious.  Be customer focused.  Speak simply and directly.

   Show genuine interest in your prospective customer’s success. Know how to probe (without being annoying) so you come away with deeper knowledge than those who are satisfied with superficial answers.

3. Improve Your Level of Business Acumen
   What can really distinguish you from the other sellers and provide a solution selling advantage is the value you bring in terms of relevant and meaningful insights, innovative approaches, and fresh perspectives that demonstrate your thorough understanding of your customer’s situation.

   Because selling solutions is about linking your solution to your customer’s most pressing business priorities, you must understand your customer’s business well enough to make the relevant links. You need business acumen to understand how your company and your customer make money, how their market and their company works, and how they measure business success.

   Only then can you ask the kinds of questions and provide the kinds of solutions that will set you apart from your competition.

The Bottom Line
When you can put it all together – customer knowledge, effective communication, and business expertise – you will differentiate yourself from the competition by the way you sell your solutions.

To learn more about the top sales questions to help your clients to succeed, download The 30 Most Effective Sales Questions to Get Right When Selling Solutions