Solution Selling: You’re Selling a Solution, so What’s the Problem?

Sales qualification frameworks are designed to identify the pain point or problem your prospect is facing. BANT asks about Need. MEDDIC identifies Pain. CHAMP dedicates two letters to CHallenges. After all, you are selling a solution, and a solution doesn’t exist unless there is a problem to be solved.

In Maestro’s DRIVE information-gathering framework, I stands for Impact. Even though it’s the third letter of the acronym, impact is where we tell people to begin discovery. As with every letter in DRIVE, there are two layers to Impact. The first is, “Why are you doing this?” Uncover the problem that your prospect is trying to solve, the problem that you’re selling a solution for. The second layer, and what’s missing from other sales qualification frameworks, is “What if you don’t?” Because selling a solution becomes much easier when your prospect has thought long and hard about what life will look like without it.

SELLING A SOLUTION: WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

It’s common for salespeople to get a bit of information about impact and keep moving. Stop. Stay where you are. Of course you want to share the good news that you are selling a solution that eliminates their pain, but that can wait. Instead, stick with impact. Find out as much as you can about the issues they are facing. You want your prospect to articulate, in their own words, what their pain is and what that looks like for them and others in their organization on a day-to-day basis.

This is not only important information for you to have, so you know how best to solve their problem. This is information that you can point to in the future if your deal begins to slow down. The more information you have on impact, problems, and pain, the better you can keep momentum going throughout the deal.

How can you dig into their problems and discover what kind of impact they are looking for? Here are some questions to ask:

• What challenges are you solving for?
• Why did you agree to meet with me today?
• How long have you been trying to solve this?
• What else have you tried?
• Why now?
• Why are you the person who wants this change?
• What impact will finding the right solution have on the top line?
• What impact will the right solution have on the bottom line?
• What did you hear about our solution/service that you particularly like?
• Besides yourself, who would be impacted by this solution? How would they be impacted?
• How long have you been trying to solve for this?
• What’s the most challenging thing you face daily in your processes? Who has been asking for this to be solved? What makes it a priority for them?

SELLING A SOLUTION: WHAT IF YOU DON’T

Sometimes when selling a solution, you’re going head-to-head with another provider. Often, however, you’re fighting against the status quo. This could mean your prospect doesn’t have a solution in place, or even that they have one of your competitors in place, but the impact has been subpar.

Change is scary for everyone, whether it’s finding a new solution or changing providers. Humans have a number of psychological biases that play into this resistance to change. The status-quo bias causes people to prefer what they are currently doing, even when it’s not serving them. The endowment effect makes people place a higher value on what they already have, even when it’s objectively not as good as something else. The sunk-cost fallacy makes people emotionally attached to past investments, even if they are no longer serving them—this makes it particularly hard to change from one solution provider to a new one.

If you understand the biases working against you when you’re selling a solution, it helps you understand why the second layer of Impact in DRIVE is so critical. “What if you don’t?” Individuals are motivated more by avoiding loss than they are by a potential gain, and “What if you don’t?” is a question that forces them to confront these future losses. How can you get your prospect to walk you through what the future looks like without your solution? Here are some questions:

• What happens if you stick with the status quo?
• What impact will not making a change have on your bottom line?
• If things stay the same for the next five years, how would that impact your growth?
• What opportunities might you miss if things don’t change?
• What will your revenue look like over the next six months if you do nothing? How might your current system hinder growth or innovation in the future?

SELLING A SOLUTION: GET SPECIFIC

We talk a lot about the importance of focusing on benefits and value when you’re selling a solution. This is important, but the more specific you can get about day-to-day pain, the better. Don’t just say that your transit software saves your prospect time. Explain to Beatrice in the revenue-processing department that her job of reconciling fare payments will go from a 40-hour task to a 4-hour task. Explain to the head of the finance department that her staff will now have more time for high-priority projects because their time reconciling fare payments has dropped by 90%.

These are the specifics you can uncover when you stay on the topic of Impact longer and ask both levels of questions. Why are you doing this? What if you don’t? And when your deal momentum starts to falter, having insight into the specific pain points serves you well. It gives you the ability to ask, “You told me that X would happen if you don’t make a change. Why has solving this problem become less of a priority?”

Selling a solution becomes much easier when you have taken the time to uncover the problem and all of its potential impacts on your prospect.

Want to do a deep dive into our DRIVE information gathering framework? Our DRIVE online training courses are free of charge right now!