CEOs, salespeople, business owners use the term
solution selling like it's this magical new concept.
But the reality is that the phrase solution selling
goes back a really long time,
like, well before I was in diapers.
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But what we do see is that solution selling
is a beautiful concept.
It takes the focus off of selling a product or a service,
and instead focuses on the solution to a set of challenges.
And that's really what solution selling is all about.
So in this video,
I'm going to show you seven solution selling tips,
the ultimate guide, check it out.
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Number One- Bring real insight.
And now this is the core of the way
I think of solution selling
is that traditional sales is all about what your product
or service is, and coming in with a big fancy pitch
and doing a tap dance.
And that's really what traditional sales is about.
But what solution selling is really focused on
is bringing actual insight to the prospect.
For a prospect to want to sit down with a salesperson,
they know that they're going to get sold.
They know they're going to get into a pressure situation.
So they're going to want to avoid sitting down
with a salesperson, whether it's by Zoom,
talking on phone or being face to face.
And so we need to bring real insight to our outreach,
to the beginnings of our interactions in order
to demonstrate that we're even
worth having a conversation with.
And so by bringing real insight, I mean,
think of yourself as someone
who has an amazing bird's eye view,
you deal with prospects in your industry all the time
or in your prospects industry all the time.
So you get to see what's really happening
in the industry, in their world.
Whereas most prospects are like those horses with the little
blinders on and they can't see left or right.
All they can see is what's in front of them.
You have a really powerful set of insight with this
bird's eye view of having talked
to so many different people.
You're almost like a consultant or someone
that just gets to see really high level what's going on.
So what is that insight that you can bring
to that prospect to engage them in that conversation,
to demonstrate that you really understand their world
on a level that not many people do?
That's how in solution selling,
we really start that conversation with genuine real insight.
Number Two- It's not about your offering.
So one thing that I think that people have this misnomer
about solution selling is that they think
that they're selling a solution,
like they're focused on the offering.
And that's actually exactly
the opposite of what's true.
Solution selling is all about understanding the challenges
that the prospect is facing.
Not focusing on your solution or your offering,
but instead it's about understanding them.
It's about knowing their challenges better
than anyone else out there,
not worrying about your product or services and the features
and the benefits or any of that stuff, but instead,
really focusing on them, keying up
on their world, starting with the real insight,
dropping any focus on your offering,
and instead, really focusing on them.
Number Three- Know their challenges.
So again, this builds off of what we've been talking about,
but one of the things that experts, true experts know
is what are the challenges that their prospects are facing.
Think of yourself almost as a doctor, right?
We use the phrase, have a doctor's mindset.
One of the things that good doctors know is they understand
the challenges, the concerns, the ailments,
the frustrations that their patients are going through.
You in the same way are going to know the challenges
that your prospects are facing,
better than anyone else out there.
In fact, one of our rules is that if you can articulate
your prospects challenges better than anyone else,
they will assume that you have the right solution.
So really focusing on the challenges
and helping draw those out,
dig into the challenges that the prospect is talking about.
Ask questions about it, find out what's really key.
Now we're coming from a certain level of knowledge and
expertise, but we don't know their particular situation.
So we've got to let them talk to bring them out,
to draw them out, and instead,
we haven't even talked about our offering yet
because we're still at the point of just focusing on
where are the areas that they're most focused on,
growing, developing, and solving.
Number Four- Dig, dig, dig.
So you can see this is all accumulative.
So we've talked about their challenges,
now we've really got to keep digging.
I find that most prospects world is like the iceberg, right?
And again most salespeople are just focused
on the tip of the iceberg,
the part of the iceberg that's right above the water.
But the reality is that most icebergs are huge,
but it's huge underneath, not at the top.
We've got to go deep.
We've got to get to the bottom of this iceberg.
Or if you want another analogy, think of it as an onion,
right, we've got to peel back the layers of what's going on.
So if a prospect says something like, yeah, you know what?
This year has been really crazy for us, right?
Most salespeople say, oh yeah, of course.
Yeah, it's been a crazy year.
I totally understand, and hear that all the time.
Right, but a great sales person will say something like,
oh, that's, I'm really glad you share that.
When you say it's been crazy,
tell me a little bit about what you're actually seeing.
Right, keep going.
And then they say something, you say, oh, well, how is that?
Or tell me more about that or unpack that for me.
We've got to keep going deeper and deeper
and deeper until we get to the core issue.
That's how we demonstrate real value in our interactions.
Number Five- Drop the pitch.
Now this is one of my biggest passions in sales.
I still see today that 99% of salespeople
are really focused on their pitch.
That is the central tool that most salespeople use
in order to try to close deals, in order
to try to engage prospects, in order to do anything
in selling, it's all about the pitch pitch pitch.
But the reality is that your prospects
don't need your pitch.
They have so much more access to information
than they ever have ever, they don't need your pitch.
They need to go through the process that we've talked about
to help you determine whether there's a fit,
to really understand what's going on.
We create value, not through
the persuasiveness of our pitch,
like we see in the movies or we see on TV,
but instead we create value
by understanding the prospect's challenges,
and really what are the costs associated
with those challenges?
What's the value of actually solving those challenges?
That's the value of your offering,
not some ROI calculator that you can pitch to your prospect.
It's about them, not us.
Number Six- Let their questions drive your presentation.
So this is a really cool nuance to presenting, right?
So at a certain point,
you will have gotten enough information that it really
is time to present or in our case demonstrate
that you can really solve their problems.
But most salespeople in this situation want
to do their one hour presentation.
But the reality is that your prospects only care
about specific aspects of your offering.
They probably don't care about the whole thing.
And so what we want to do is keep our presentations
as short as possible,
and then let their questions drive
where the presentation goes, so it's almost like,
instead of thinking of traditional sales
is almost like reading a novel, right?
And it's this big book and they've got to,
when they're, when they're following your presentation,
they're just kind of going through the whole novel.
In this case,
it's almost like a choose your own adventure book
where the prospect is, you know,
you are presenting the offering that you have,
but then you're letting their questions drive
what are the areas that you're really focused on.
So really engaging the prospect and keeping them focused on
what matters to them is going to make you much more likely
to ultimately close that deal.
Number Seven- Respond to objections with questions.
So this may sound a little counterintuitive
because I think a lot of us, when we get objections,
we immediately want to come back
with that perfect line that persuades them,
that their objection is somehow misplaced or misguided.
But the reality is that your prospect
has an objection for a reason,
and we need to find out what that reason is.
So when you get an objection,
don't immediately respond with some really persuasive idea
or explanation, but instead inquire,
find out what's going on, get some clarification.
And so that's why we always say,
you want to respond to objections with questions
because you want to find out
why they ask that in the first place.
So if a prospect says something like, oh, you know what,
this seems really expensive.
Most salespeople will say, oh, well, you know,
we have payment plans or we could actually let me see
if I can find some possible discounts for you.
It's like they go into their like immediately trying
to solve and tap dance around the objection.
What does a professional salesperson do
when the prospect says, oh, this is really expensive?
The professional salesperson says something like,
oh, I really appreciate you saying that.
Help me understand though, what prompts you to mention that?
And let them explain why they mention that potential
objection, it may just be that, you know what,
it was more than they expected and they don't have
the budget in place,
or it may be that they don't see enough value,
whatever it is we want to find out
why they mention the objection.
Again, this is not about avoidance.
This is not about just trying to completely,
never deal with the objection,
but we really want to get to the core issue
again, think of the iceberg, right?
An objection, most of the time,
most salespeople just deal with the tip of the iceberg.
We want to get to the bottom of what really matters.
And then a lot of times,
if you're handling these objections correctly,
you're actually never going to have to actually deal
with the specific objection they mentioned,
because it's something else that's driving the objection.
That is what professional selling's all about.
That's what solution selling is focused on.
So there are seven solution selling tips,
the ultimate guide, and if you enjoyed this video,
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