solution selling
Lessons Learned from GTM Consulting
For the past two years, I have performed part-time, contract go-to-market consulting. My wife had a surgery that went wrong 18 months ago, so I needed something that would allow me to take care of her, stay sharp, earn money, and help companies grow. What I encountered was quite different from what I expected, so I thought I would pass it along.
Most of the work was with small to midsize companies, but the problems and needs mirrored what I have encountered at larger companies. The main difference is that large companies tend to look to software to address problems. In contrast, smaller companies often lack the budget for what they view as a solution that increases complexity.
Here are my Top 5 findings:
- GTM plans are often developed at the highest levels, often in isolation, without market testing and validation.
- An interesting aside is that the company is often really seeking sales optimization but believes it is doing things “well enough” today and therefore needs to focus on new offerings and revenue streams.
- New perspectives on past performance and failures are well received but more surprising than anticipated. This leads to a better understanding of needs, which builds consensus moving forward.
- Sales teams are sometimes pitted against one another, rather than working together to help everyone achieve more (Coopetition – “A rising tide lifts all boats.”)
- Sometimes the competing team isn’t sales, but support. The team wants to help the customer (which is great), but works outside its defined scope instead of bringing in the services and sales teams to work jointly to solve the customer’s problem.
- Sales teams are focused on selling features rather than solving business problems.
- Training those teams on solution selling and understanding the prospect’s needs pays off.
- CRMs are not consistently used and often reflect idealized fiction rather than reality.
- Old, dead, or unqualified opportunities; lack of recent contact or interaction; deals that have slipped more than once; and a lack of understanding (company, needs, players, business environment) all point to an unrealistic pipeline.
- Sales management and teams are not leveraging AI to help focus their efforts.
- Conversely, they may view AI as a panacea, investing time and money in tools that supplement a strong team rather than focusing on strengthening the team.
Here are the related Lessons Learned:
- Selling is a byproduct of problem-solving. You can’t solve problems if you don’t know what they are. Every interaction with a prospect should focus on gathering information, building trust and relationships, and leveraging prior interactions to demonstrate that your solution will solve their problem and ease their pain.
- Here’s solution sales again. Teaching teams to ask better questions, listen more, and validate their understanding increases their standing with prospects.
- Identifying common business problems and describing how your product or service solves them should be the foundation of the plan.
- Perform market analysis. How do other companies describe those problems? Their terminology, often found in job postings by competitors and your target audience, can help create effective messaging that resonates. Work to become the natural fit for what your prospects are seeking and the problems they are likely dealing with.
- Individual contributors get paid to win, but sales management needs to create incentives for collaborative efforts that lead to both wins and ongoing customer growth.
- Paying sales teams for net new business only causes them to ignore install base expansion opportunities. And, if another vendor solves their problems, it is only a matter of time before they replace you.
- For one company, I convinced them to implement a 2% SPIV (like a SPIFF, but team-focused) for every team member who actively contributed to team improvement. SPIV payments were quarterly, and there was a running total so the team could see the fund growth. Initial indications of a positive impact are good.
- Another benefit of collaboration is that it helps teams focus on approaches that work due to ongoing testing and refinement. Collaboration also helps teams focus on a more accurate ICP (ideal customer profile). Sales management can then feed their findings back to Marketing to tailor and fine-tune their efforts.
- CRMs often either lack information or are full of wishful thinking. They focus on activities, and not progress and next steps.
- Using MEDPICC as a foundation for qualification is a much better start.
- Sales managers need to validate the information independently to ensure their teams are upfront and honest. Trust, coaching, and collaboration work together for the win.
- Chasing deals that are unlikely to close wastes valuable resources.
- AI is not a panacea, but it is very effective for research, market validation, prospecting, and meeting preparation.
- Going in prepared builds respect and credibility, saves time, and helps you quickly qualify prospects in or out.
- There may be opportunities to nurture prospects who have potential but aren’t qualified for immediate deals, seeding the pipeline for future opportunities. This could be a great place to leverage AI for personalized journeys with highly relevant curated content.
So, what are your thoughts? Have you seen some of these problems yourself? How did you handle them? Let me know in the comments below.
And if you are looking for assistance with your business, contact me.
Sales Discussions that Work
Selling is challenging work, and often, “we” (sales and marketing teams) make it even harder than it needs to be. How many times have you seen a selling script, elevator pitch, or initial presentation that is long, boring, and undifferentiated? People have short attention spans, and nobody wants to interact with someone who doesn’t listen or is pushy.
Your initial discussion is crucial to your success. Instead of going over a list of features, reading a slide deck, and telling why you and your product are so great, let’s try something different.
1. Understand why people buy. Any change can be difficult, risky, and painful. So, the pain they are facing has to be even greater than the potential pain of change, or they won’t bother changing.
Your main job early on is to listen and work to understand their concerns. You may have a perfect solution, but if it doesn’t solve their pain, it holds little value to your prospect. This initial meeting is all about them.
2. At the start of the meeting, ask, “What would make this time well spent for you? What would you like to walk away from this meeting with?” Get them thinking about their problems and the value you may be able to provide, even if they don’t fully articulate them to you.
3. Ask questions and follow-up questions. People don’t lead with their significant issues, and someone unwilling to divulge anything likely isn’t a buyer. The more the prospect talks, the more you learn. So many sellers do not understand this simple concept. They want to dazzle you with features and demos – even if those things are not what the prospect needs.
4. Once you think that you have identified a pain, restate it, qualify and quantify it. For example, “You mentioned that your product release cycles are too long and complex. What is the business impact of that, and what would the impact be if you could reduce that time and effort by 50%?” Write their response down, in their own words, because it could be vital later.
If you identify several pain points, review them and ask the prospect to identify the top three issues from the list, and then ask why those three. Once you have their answer, ask if other stakeholders in their organization would agree with that list, and why or why not. Again, get them to expand their thinking and work through this, as it will help you identify other stakeholders who may have other priorities.
5. If you are giving a presentation, pull up the most relevant slide (customer problem/benefit slides work well here) and ask if this sounds similar to the problem they are facing. It can be a good starting point for getting the discussion moving in the right direction. By providing relevant information, especially about how you solved a similar problem for another customer, they will see the value of providing you with more data and information.
6. Don’t worry if you are not able to cover everything you intended, as long as the meeting is productive. I’ve also seen salespeople cut someone off and move on to a new slide rather than discussing something of substance. I was actually told once by a sales leader that five minutes of discussion is all that is required in an initial 30-minute meeting, because our goal is to pique their interest. That approach just doesn’t work. You may impress them, but if you don’t start building confidence that you can help them, there probably won’t be a second call.
7. Next steps. Keep in mind that your time is valuable, and qualifying out a prospect who is not a good fit is essential – it helps you avoid false hopes and lets you focus on people who might genuinely need your help. The next meeting could go many ways, but it’s best to ask the prospect. Would they like to expand the audience? Is there a specific issue they would like to address? Would they like a product demo or a technical discussion? Is something like a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) keeping them from opening up? Lack of engagement on their part is a huge clue. Be direct and ask the tough questions now to avoid wasting valuable time and effort later.
Here is a mini success story. In 2010, my team and I began selling the first commercial vector high-performance analytics database. Several products were already out that claimed to be 70x-100x faster than others. Our pitch was that we were 70 times faster than other products. That was self-limiting from the start and likely prevented people from contacting us.
After two months of minimal success (I closed a deal with a small hedge fund, which was the only sale in all regions), we started a weekly webinar called “Why Fast Matters.” The focus was on positive business outcomes rather than specific technology and features (“speeds and feeds”). We opened with some “What if?” statements, such as: What if you get answers from complex queries faster than your competitors? What if you could do that without the cost, complexity, delays, and limitations of a Star Schema or pre-aggregated data? What if you could do this on commodity x86 hardware? We would then briefly cover the breakthrough technology (a precursor to Snowflake) and offer a free half-day meeting with a consultant.
Within the first two weeks, we met with a company that was later acquired by PayPal shortly before eBay acquired PayPal. This company was about to spend $500K on a proprietary hardware expansion that would have only provided additional capacity for the following year. Their customers bought advertising based on queries against the last six months of their data. I asked the question, “What if they could query against five years of data and get answers faster than they do today? Do you think that would help them buy more advertising? Do your customers ever ask for this?” They said their customers frequently ask for 12 months of data and would be willing to pay more for these capabilities. Still, they did not have a way to do this cost-effectively.
I closed a $360K ARR subscription deal in two weeks, and they purchased $100K of commodity Dell hardware for our software to run on. They saved 8% over their planned purchase, and more importantly, they rolled out advanced querying capabilities (against six years of data) in less than a month. There was incredible value to them and their customers, and it generated more business for them. We wouldn’t have identified this need if we’d focused primarily on features and technology.
As an aside, I was initially chastised for going off message, but after the Australian team adopted our approach and began closing deals, it became the new corporate standard. If something isn’t working, focus on finding ways to improve it. Even incremental change can be meaningful.
In the words of Tony Robbins, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.”
Two Truths of Enterprise Sales
I have been selling products and services to large enterprise organizations for most of my career. I like to tell people, “Everyone is in sales,” because one way or another, they are.
Early in my career, I was a Systems Analyst for a Marketing company. I created what I’ve been told was the first custom coupon system for Subaru, as well as several systems for Mitsubishi Motors and Mitsubishi Electric. We would devise several ideas to pitch to the customer, then hold follow-up meetings to flesh them out and help sell an extensive, multi-faceted program. It was a great learning experience in understanding what mattered and how to effectively upsell deals.
Standard sales advice is to sell to a known problem or a project. The thinking behind finding projects is that a tactical or strategic need has already been identified, with executive support and funding to address it. Most companies have some degree of dysfunction (which is why Patrick Lencioni’s books are so popular) that tends to affect projects negatively and reduces the seller’s chances of success.
Focusing on problems is the way to go, but a business rarely comes to you to disclose those problems and their impact. A Consultative Selling approach is helpful in this situation. Upfront preparation can be time-consuming, but the results are often bigger deals that close faster.
The process I use involves understanding the business, its customers, and its competition, as well as potential changes in the business or industry. I will search for clues that indicate potential problems (from financial reports and filings to product-specific forum posts). I will then hypothesize a few potential problems and reach out to the highest-level individuals in the organization likely responsible for these issues. Often they will correct you and fill in the gaps. By doing this, you may uncover things that your prospect has not yet considered.
When you do speak with someone, you need to demonstrate your understanding and potential value-add to learn more and begin gaining their trust, while listening for validation or other information to refine your hypothesis. People buy from people they like and trust, and this approach becomes the foundation. From here, you can guide the process and expand your reach to other areas and layers of the organization. As a seller, your focus is on proposing real, mutually beneficial solutions with a high probability of success.
So, back to the two truths –
- Companies and teams are often biased toward the status quo and the familiar. Problems are rarely solved using the same people, products, and processes that got them into this position in the first place. As a seller, focus on outcomes. Help them visualize what success looks like and how it feels. Overcome negative emotions like fear with positive emotions, envisioning a better future, and then a plan to achieve their desired outcome.
- Change can be expensive at first. It is an investment in the future that should yield both short-term benefits and long-term savings. Your focus as a seller should be on delivering value, which comes from many areas and in various forms – direct and indirect. Help your prospect figure this out, and you are well on your way to winning their business.
This approach and understanding can lead to new customer acquisition and ongoing account growth. You are continually demonstrating your value and commitment to your customers’ success, and that pays off.
Here’s a bonus third truth. If you cannot quickly gain consensus on the root cause problem(s) or traction with your proposed solution, qualifying out is often the best next step. Nurturing the prospect may lead to a future deal, but investing those 3-6 months on another prospect will likely result in more deals closed. Qualify out quickly and move on – that is better for everyone involved.
Remember, hope is not a strategy.
What are you Really Selling? (Hint: Solutions)
Understanding pain and need comes from asking good, targeted questions, listening to the response, and confirming or drilling down to make sure you understand the problems, their impact, and what would be better if those problems were resolved. This is the foundation of solution selling.
Once you understand what your prospect needs and why they need it, you can connect with them meaningfully to increase your win rate by providing a solution to their problem.
It is interesting to see Sales and Marketing people focus on features, performance, cost, and even value without linking them to a company’s specific business impact. That often goes hand in hand with showing 20 slides and focusing on every major feature, which is a great way to alienate your prospect.
A sales adage from the 1940s (source) asserts, “No one wants a drill. What they want is the hole.” Today, that basic understanding of why people and companies buy is often lost in sales and marketing messages. Sales success is all about solving problems and satisfying needs.
Several years ago, my team and I were selling a new Analytics Database that was genuinely different. Still, our message matched every other database vendor: “70% – 100% faster than every other product.” It is nearly impossible to differentiate your product using a non-differentiated message. Don’t treat your product or service as a commodity if it isn’t one.
I flipped the messaging to focus on business needs. We created a weekly webinar focused on Why Fast Matters. Query response time is important, but responsiveness to customer needs and requests is essential. What if they didn’t have to wait a week or two to create new indexes or a month to update a Star Schema? They could just run queries as-is, maybe wait a minute instead of a second or two, and have what they need then and there. That message resonated; we sold the first 50% of that product globally. When the Australian team began using our messaging, their sales also increased. Funny how that works.
Effectiveness is all about results and intended outcomes. Efficiency is about achieving those results with the least time and effort invested. It doesn’t mean that we are looking for a lazy approach to find a win. Instead, it is about identifying repeatable patterns that cut out unnecessary activities, speed up the sales cycle, minimize related costs, and maximize wins.
To better understand what you are selling, view it from your prospect’s perspective. What struggles are they likely facing? Where are the greatest opportunities to help their type of business? Are you analyzing data to attempt to assess their unmet needs? Your insight can become a huge differentiator, especially if you can teach them different and better ways to do something (à la the Challenger Sales Model).
What is the difference between your prospect company and its main competition? This analysis requires a general understanding of the problem space and a more specific understanding of the prospect company, its history, and 2-3 main competitors. It also requires an honest account of how your company and products compare to the competition so you can play up your strengths and limit investment in areas where the fit is weaker.
The next item to focus on is messaging. Below are a few examples from my career –
- Analytics & Big Data – The focus here is often on data volume, data currency, query speed, cost, maintenance, and downtime. Those things become essential later in the sales discussion, but initially, companies want to know what problems their product or solution will solve.
- Some of my fastest deals sold because I showed them how to make better decisions faster and/or identify minor problems before they became major problems. Avoiding problems and unplanned outages were critical elements of the messaging.
- In one case, I closed a significant deal in less than three months by focusing on how a company could provide customers with five years of transactional data. Those customers could use the data to make better purchasing decisions in less time than the current system took to analyze six months of data. Their sales increased after implementing this modernized system. The winning message was that it helped customers make better buying decisions faster.
- Embedded Products – While many companies focus on APIs, features, or cost per unit, I focused on how the product made things better and easier to manage, improving customer support and Customer Satisfaction.
- I closed a $1.1 million deal in less than two months to a medical device company by focusing on the life cycle of those devices (often 10-15 years) and how their customers needed consistency from machine to machine. Consistency over time was the winning message here.
- After being approached by a Defense Contractor for a relational database product for a new Flight Simulator system, I changed the discussion to the complexity of flight control systems, the need to correlate 30+ operational systems in real-time, and the importance of taking a verbal command and translating it to specific commands for each related system. That led to selling a NoSQL product ideally suited for this complex environment. Letting our software handle the highly complex workload helped us win this deal.
- Consulting Services – These were not contracting or body shop services (commodities) but actual Business and Technical Consulting services with high visibility and impact. In these cases, our expertise, experience, and track record of success in different but demanding scenarios provided confidence. These were often multi-phase engagements to prove our value before making a significant commitment.
- In a bid against two well-established competitors, we won a deal with a large Petroleum company worth nearly $500K. The proposal included information we uncovered about the system and use case and later verified with the prospect, a section on our people and past projects, and a high-level project plan with firm-fixed pricing. We won the bid, and I later discovered that our cost was $50K higher than the largest competitor and $100K more than the other competitor. The customer told me, “Your proposal demonstrated the understanding of who we are and what we need, and that confidence provided the justification to select your company and pay a premium to have the job done right the first time.”
- My first million-dollar deal was with a company where we demonstrated our ability to solve problems. They knew they needed help but weren’t sure where. I created a “Pool of Days” concept that provided flexibility in the work performed (tasks, deliverables, and scheduling) but had minimum monthly burn rates and an expiration date to protect my company. The winning messaging this time was that flexibility and the ability to accommodate changing needs without introducing significant risk or additional cost were better ways to buy consulting services. This approach led to many other similar deals with other companies.
The common theme across these examples is helping companies solve their specific business problems. Even when technology was central to the message, focusing on better outcomes for that prospect and their customers was essential. Value matters, but positive results and better outcomes matter even more for purchasing decisions.
Nobody wants to take a chance on a new vendor and be responsible for a high-profile failure. Building confidence early makes a huge difference, and following through to successful implementation creates happy customers who become loyal customers who provide references and referrals.
Success starts with selling what you can do for your prospects from a business perspective. You solve their problems with the solutions they need and avoid getting lost in the noise of unfocused messaging from most of your competition.
Good Selling!
What’s the Prize If I Win?
In consulting and in sales, there is a tendency to believe that if you show someone how to find that proverbial “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” they will be motivated to do so. Seasoned professionals tend to ask, “What problem are you trying to solve?” to understand whether there is a real opportunity.
Sometimes a mere pot of gold just isn’t enough to motivate. Usually the motivation is something very personal. What’s in it for them? Not what’s in it for me?
The skill is determining what matters most to the decision-maker and in what order, then showing how the proposed solution will bring them closer to achieving their personal goals.
Case in point. Several years ago, I tried to sell a packaged Business Intelligence (BI) system built on our database platform to the customers most likely to need it. Qualification performed – check. Interested – check. Proof of value – check. Quick ROI – check. Close the deal – not so fast…
This application was a set of dashboards with 150-200 predefined KPIs (key performance indicators). The premise was that you could quickly tailor and deploy the new BI system with little risk (finding and validating that the needed data was available to support their KPIs was the biggest risk, but one we could identify up front). The business impact and ROI were there, and we could deliver tangible value at half the cost of a typical similar implementation. Who wouldn’t want that?
I spent several days onsite with the prospect, identified areas of concern and opportunity, and used their data to quantify the potential benefit. By the end of the week, I could show the potential for an 8x ROI in the first year. Remember, I estimated this using their data, not random or industry figures. Being somewhat conservative, I suggested that even half that amount would be a big success. Look – we found the pot of gold!
Despite this, the deal never closed. This financial services company had a lot of money, and the CIO had a huge budget. Saving $500K+ on this project would be nice, but it wasn’t essential. While the impact was there, the urgency was lacking.
I later learned he was pushing forward an initiative of his own that was highly visible. The new system I proposed could have become a distraction, and he did not need that reputational risk. Had I made this determination sooner, I could have easily repositioned the offering to better align with and support his agenda.
For example, the system could have shifted its focus from financial savings to project and risk management for his higher-priority initiative. The KPIs could be on earned value, scheduling, and deliverables. This probably would have sold, as it would have been far more appealing to this CIO and supported what was important to him (i.e., his prize if he wins). The additional financial savings initially identified would be the icing on the cake, to be reinvested later.
Several lessons emerged from this effort. In this instance, I focused on my personal pot of gold (based on logic and common sense) rather than on my customer’s priorities and prize for winning. That mistake cost me this deal, but it is one I have not made since – helping me win many other deals.
Where Ideas, Experiences, and Lessons Learned Intersect 