The Difference between Selling and Solving

While businesses may not be interested in buying what you are selling, they quite possibly might be need the solution you are providing.  Think about that for a minute.   In today’s economic climate, businesses are not looking to spend money, so do not waste your sales pitch on them.  However, businesses are always looking for solutions to the challenges they are currently facing.  If your offering provides a solution of value, there is an opportunity for a relationship.

If your sales people are struggling to close deals and bring in orders, chances are quite high that they are pitching your products and are way to busy selling stuff.  People do not want to deal with “salespeople pushing a particular product or model or option because they want to sell it.” (Skip Anderson)  Take a different approach, think how your product offering would benefit the customer’s business.  If it is benefits like lower costs, saves time, or make someone’s life easier, forget it.  That is a pitch that is tried and tired.    Aim for real benefits like taking over a component of a job function that is so time consuming that it prevents a person from getting other components of that job function accomplished.  Or, enables the business to access resources that eliminates waste or inefficiencies.  Those are tangible benefits.  (This approach has been newly coined as provaction-based selling.)

Start with a learning question, “if you did not have to deal with ‘X’ what would you be spending your time and money on?”  Now you have an opportunity to bring a solution to the business that enables your customer the ability to deal with some other problem or issue in their business.  Your solution becomes tangible, it is real, and it is very personal.  Quit the sales pitch and start solving some problems, it is will be much more productive.