Over the past year, I’ve done a continuing series on what it means to market and sell “Solutions” Today’s post is Part 5 of the Series
- What 3 Questions Indicate Whether You Need to Sell “Solutions”? (and when does selling “Product” work better?…) (Part 1_
- Do Your Product Business Units Lead to (Product) “Push” Marketing (and Missed Revenue)? (Part 2)
- The Three Types of “Solutions”: Which One Do You Use to Market and Sell? (Part 3)
- The Solution Blueprint: A Visual Tool for Connecting with Your Customers (and accelerating product revenue…) (Part 4)
- Today’s Post – What are the Steps to Create Solution Messaging? (Part 5)
I’ve talked a lot about the advantages of using “Solution” (rather than “Product” messaging to connect to customers, and drive more revenue for your products, but the question I often get sounds something like this:
“OK, I see the advantages of using Solution Messaging – What do I do now?”
That question is the focus of my post today.
The key to messaging Solutions is a tool that I call “The Solution Blueprint”, a visual tool that helps technology vendors communicate the value of their offerings in terms of “Solutions” to customer problems – and accelerate revenue. I talked about this tool in more detail in my Solution Blueprint post. In Figure 1 below, you can see an diagram that describes the key elements of the Solution Blueprint.
Figure 1: The Components of a Solution Blueprint
Components of the Solution Blueprint
- A Customer Challenge that the Solutions solve. Examples would be business continuity, network security, application provisioning, etc…)
- A good, better, best Maturity Model.
For Each Solution on the Blueprint
- Name for solution – By giving the solution a name, you can easily use it as a noun, and communicate specific benefits to the customer, often from multiple products
- Value Proposition for each solution
- Products Behind the Solutions – Creates a discussion around solving customer problems, with the Products as proof points
Why is the Solution Blueprint Important?
Often technology vendors and service providers are so focused on describing “what” their products do, that they neglect to mention “why” a customer should care.
Leading with “Solutions” has two major advantages:
- Solution Messages are More Effective and connect with customers
- Product messaging focuses on YOU (not the customer and their problems)
- Solution Messages are Easier
- for Marketing and Sales Generalists
As shown in Figure 2 below, many organizations use generalists to have initial customer discussions, and bring in SEs and specialists to help close the deal.
Figure 2: The Basic Sales Process
By using solution messaging to Qualify and Position, you enable more conversations that connect with customers – leading to a bigger pipeline and more revenue.
Technology Vendors can use a Solution Blueprint to enable:
- Marketing and Generalist Sales to Qualify and Position based on Solutions
- Specialists sales to Validate and Close based on Products
So we’ve done a quick summary of What a Solution Blueprint is, and Why it is Important, let’s talk about HOW to create a Solution Blueprint.
To Build a Solution Blueprint, follow the steps below. You should engage staff from your company who have detailed knowledge of product capabilities, and others who have detailed knowledge of the problems that customers are trying to solve. It is critical that you look at the discussion from the customer perspective – not in terms of your product/service capabilities.
Steps to Create a Solution Blueprint:
Baseline/Step 1: Identify a Customer Challenge You Solve and a List of Focus/Applicable Products
- Category could be Business Continuity, Automation, Security, etc…
Step 2: Identify a Solution Maturity Model (Good, Better, Best)
- Is there a logical progression for a basic solution, a more robust solution and a strongest solution?
- Example: While a complete business continuity solution might be “Multi-Site DR”, many customers will stop short with an approach like local backups (basic) or backups to the cloud (intermediate).
Step 3: Choose a Name – for Each Solution
- Choose a name that can be used as a noun and is descriptive of the customer challenge, or how you solve it
Step 4: Develop a Basic Value Proposition – for Each Solution
- Outline why customers would care about each of the solutions in your Blueprint. This typically includes a brief description of the problem and your solution
Step 5: Document the Products Behind The Solution – for Each Solution
- Create a list of products that provide the value proposition.
- Do not start with product bundles that have broad functionality. You may find you need only a few products in a bundle – and then you are faced with whether you want to change your bundling to sell a Solution
Step 6: Verify that Your Solutions are Reasonable to Customers
- Determine approximate pricing for each solution to verify that the pricing is reasonable relative to perceived value
- Review the draft Solution Blueprint with customers and your channel
Building Your Message Map
Many vendors create 25/50/100 word message maps to help them build marketing and sales tools. The Solution Blueprint provides the solution messaging for these message maps
Message Map = Your Customer Value Proposition + Solution Blueprint Message
For more information on the detailed process to Build Your Solution Blueprint into a Message Map, check out my post, Case Study: Creating a Solution Blueprint and Message Map
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