Is a Solution Selling Based Approach More Beneficial in B2B Sales?

Solution selling can enable better sales outcomes because it helps create a better connect customer connect viz-a-viz a brand’s product and services.

The concept of solution selling gained traction many years ago. Solution selling can enable sellers to understand modern buyers and their needs using better processes.

As a model, solution selling can help sellers create better sales journeys that align with what current market needs and customer expectations are. While this is a sales methodology that has been in existence for a long time, not a lot of modern day sales teams initiate or utilize all the facets of this model to create better ROI. Although, some parts or areas connected to a core solution selling model are sometimes put into practice individually.

Sales teams who completely master this model are at a better advantage because this methodology allows salespeople to deepen customer relationships and build fruitful, long-term customer bonds that can lead to repeat sales and customer retention.

Let’s explore a few of the top benefits of a solution selling based sales model:

Solution Selling Focuses on First Identifying the Pain Points and Needs of your Target Customers

Seasoned sales and marketing leaders will always bat for a process that allows teams and brands to first understand how a particular product or service can benefit a particular set of customers before using any kind of outreach or positioning to simply sell or market a brand’s services/products.

In order to do this well, solution selling comes handy because it is meant to have salespeople first understand the current needs of a set of potential buyers. Buyer needs can change all the time depending on current or near-term goals as well as market conditions. This is where every potential opportunity needs to be explored better to successfully convert it into a sale. Because, not every buyer is ready to buy at the same time.

By first understanding the needs of a set of prospects and finding out which product/service can benefit them most at a given time: sales people can use the best-fit product or service solution within their suite to initiate interest and move the sales or buying journey forward a lot faster.

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In short, solution selling ensures that sales people do not focus on simply selling their product or service without first identifying whether the prospect is in need of it or whether a pain point they currently have can be met effectively by what the brand has to offer.

What Can A Product/Service Do For You Better Than Others?

In many sales cycles, sales people tend to focus on trying to hard sell their products/services by fueling conversations using case studies or sharing their product’s ‘’top features’’ to try to initiate interest.

This is where the difference lies, in figuring out whether a brand’s ‘’top features’’ are truly beneficial or can serve as an actual ‘solution’ to a target prospect’s need or pain point. If it isn’t, no matter how well a sales pitch is planned using even the most sophisticated collaterals and approach, a successful sale will not be made.

What a particular product or service can do serve a prospect’s/customer’s problem is what drives the core concept of a solution selling model. At a time when prospects have a lot of choice in a dynamic marketplace, creating that differentiating factor becomes more integral to the whole sales cycle to help a brand gain more traction and beat their competition faster.

Solution Selling is Built on a Value-based Concept

Some of the industry’s best sales minds often talk about the importance of creating value in every sales conversation. Customers and prospects today do not want to be ‘’sold to’’, they want to have fruitful, authentic conversations with brands and their reps. Sales people today are expected to play a more advisory role rather than be sale-sy.

A solution selling model allows sales teams to be more ‘’value-based’’ wherein every message, outreach, supporting document and collateral speaks to not just the benefits of a product or service but also the value it can create in the short and long term, if adopted by the prospect’s team.

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Solution Selling Helps Qualify Leads

All your prospects will not be in-market for a particular product or service at the same time. By using different sales/marketing tactics (like ABM or solution selling) to create a basis that allows you to first identify what people need and whether they need something like your product now can help qualify your lead database and segment your target audience more effectively. When you know that a certain set of prospects could be interested in your service/product at the start of a new quarter for instance, the right outreach and messaging can be put to use at the right time to initiate the next steps in the prospecting and sales journey.

Stronger efforts can be then prioritized for those audiences that are currently facing a challenge that your product / service can effectively help solve.

Are you ready for ‘Solution Selling’ in 2023?

If sales people breakdown the typical aspects of a solution selling based approach, most are already using a couple of facets from it to drive sales growth. Put together, a solution selling based approach in its entirety can actually be more useful to an end-to-end sales process and business.