If you are a regular reader of my blog posts the past year you have seen a lot of discussion about the importance of “Solution” messages to connect to customers (and sell more of your products). My most recent series provides a good overview of the issues and the best practices in connecting with customers with Solution messages.
- Does Your Messaging Work in the “Cocoon”- But Fall Flat with Customers?
- How to Build the “Hook” into Your Messaging to Create “Pull” and Accelerate Revenue
- A Case Study: Building a Message Map that Connects to Your Customers and Accelerates Revenue
By now, I’m sure there are some folks out there that are saying to themselves – “This is getting old, we all know that selling products works (why else would everyone be doing it?)” It is true that I’ve made the discussion too much of a battle between “right” or “wrong” approaches, when the reality is that the right time to sell Solutions is more nuanced.
In my post, “What 3 Questions Indicate You Need to Sell “Solutions”? , I gave an overview of these scenarios and outlined the 3 questions below:
- Does the product solve the customer problem by itself, or is it a part of a group products/ services needed to solve a problem?
- How familiar is the target audience with your product category, and the problem that you solve?
- Where is the individual customer in the buying cycle for your product
These questions basically break down into two scenarios when you need to sell “Products”.
The first scenario is illustrated in Question #1 and #2 – You sell products when positioning Products connects with customers – either because the product is stand-alone solution to a problem or because the audience is so familiar with the category that you can start farther down the sales cycle.
That brings us to the second scenarios when it is best to sell “Product”, and was hinted at in Question #3 above – Where is the individual customer in the sales cycle?
In my experience, this is the nuance that trips up many marketing and sales organizations, and creates a culture of selling “Product” when customers need to hear about “Solutions” .
Figure 1: When to Focus on Solutions in the Sales Process
The Time for the “Solution” Sale
The Qualification and Positioning stages of the sales processes are critical because many technology vendors feel they can close deals – if only they had more deals coming into the top of the funnel… I know that I am sounding like a broken record (whatever that is??) but that is why marketing and sales need to use Solution messages for these stages of customer engagement – to get more qualified opportunities.
Solution messaging connects to customer needs, so will generate more customer opportunities AND Solution messaging tends to be less complex and easier to learn than all of the nuances of a particular product – so generalist salespeople and your channel are more comfortable and more successful at having customer conversations – leading to more discussions and more opportunities.
The Time for the “Product” Sale
But let us get back to the role of the “Product” sale. In nearly every technology sale there comes a time when the customer is interested but needs to VALIDATE that the Solution really meets their needs – and to do that they need to know more about the product. Things like “is it integrated into Cisco UCS for automated backup, or is the RAM sufficient to support specific applications in a VDI environment. These questions are important and critical to sales success – but they happen downstream (not at the beginning of a sales process!)
What I’ve seen happen in tech company cultures is that internal staff begin to believe that everyone on the outside has the same perspective they have, the same priorities and certainly believes that their product is revolutionary and something all customers would want. From a marketing and selling standpoint there is a tendency to skip the “why should the customer want your product” and get right to the competitive differentiation (because that is where the vendor’s Product Marketing team is often operating). My suspicion is that this dynamic is one of the drivers for the tech industry tendency to “push products”.
A better way to think about this Product selling stage is as a second “test” from the customer.
- The first test is “Are your relevant to me? (and needs a Solution discussion)
- The second test is “Are you the best option to solve my problem?” (and needs a Product discussion)
To pass this second test, you need good product-focused materials that differentiate your offering. You will recognize this material – it is the material you have in piles and is a disorganized mess on your partner portal 🙂
Think of the messaging and assets you develop in terms of progression of messages shown in Figure 2 below.
Figure 2: Core Marketing Architecture
Let’s look at this approach to messaging in terms of the sales process from Figure 1, and to answer the question on when to position Solutions vs. Products. Figure 3 below brings these two concepts together into one visual – “The Basic Sales Process” and “When to use Solution vs. Product Messaging.”
- Steps 0-1: Thought leadership and customer value propositions need to connect to a compelling market vision (not a Product message)
- Step 2: When you market and sell to qualify new opportunities and position your value, (need to focus on Solutions, to connect to customer needs)
- Step 3: When you have qualified the opportunity, you need to prove you are the best alternative for the customer (so you need your strong Product messages and differentiation)
Figure 3: When to Use Solution vs. Product Messaging in the Marketing & Sales Process
The Bottom Line
The Product information your organization is creating is critical, but for many organizations it is used too early in the sales process (and there is a major shortage of Solution-focused materials to help jumpstart initial sales). By using this approach, not only are you missing out on new sales opportunities, but you are also wasting a lot of resources creating materials that don’t accomplish what is needed (check out my post “Are you wasting 50% of the resources you spend on training and sales tools…” for more on this dynamic)
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