(Editor’s note: This is a classic Gil Cargill column that I originally ran a couple of years back in the late OfficeDealer magazine.)
Gil Cargill
That’s right. A significant proportion of the challenges facing our industry, as it pertains to selling solutions, can be solved by looking directly into the mirror. Managers, owners and executives of reseller companies continue to manage their sales forces in a way that minimizes the probability of success, as it pertains to selling true document solutions. Let’s take a look at some of the things you can do, right now, to stop this madness. It has gone on too long and, candidly, nothing will change until management changes its attitude of and behavior toward the sales force.
The first thing you need to do is stop hiring salespeople who have been successful selling analog systems in the hopes that, through some quirk of magic, they will be able to become predictably productive selling solutions. The problem with this strategy revolves around the fact that the DNA which makes one a successful analog salesperson is completely different from the DNA required to be successful in selling solutions.
The second thing you can do is to take a hard look at your training program. Manufacturers are just starting to wake up and realize that they need to bring some business sales training to the reseller channel. You can get a head start on this by teaching your DNA-compatible salespeople how businesses make business decisions. An easy way to do this is to invite your company’s CFO into your next sales meeting to present to your team how businesses evaluate true solutions. A solution is not a solution unless it renders a permanent, measurable and significant improvement in one or more of the prospect’s business operating conditions. Your sales team must learn how to:
- Become conversant in the language of business as well as in the decision-making process within business
- Present a cost justification based on both hard and soft dollars
- Probe and seek decision-making criteria based on the results a prospect desires, not based on the “speeds and feeds” of the product the sales representative is selling
Lastly, you must modify internal operations. Solutions sales take longer than box sales. Solutions sales also require your team to be able to create proposals that illustrate, in a before-and-after fashion, the operating conditions that will be impacted by the solution. Frequently, salespeople attempt to sell a crafted solution using boilerplate proposals which, tragically, do not mention the improved results but only specify technical issues regarding the box the salesperson is proposing.
An additional strategy you can employ is to have your team collect case studies of those customers who have achieved success through the implementation of a document-management solution. These case studies should be quantified. If you organize your team in an effort to get out and talk to all customers and establish some quantification of the results those customers have derived, I think you will find your organization to be farther down the road as it pertains to implementing a true solutions sale.
Remember: To the prospect, the technology we sell is only the delivery vehicle of the solution. It is not the solution, in and of itself.
Good Luck & Good Selling!!
About the Author: Gil Cargill is president and founder of Cargill Consulting Group, a sales effectiveness consulting firm that offers expertise in sales, sales management, and customer retention. He is also a popular speaker at many sales-related events. For more information, contact Gil by phone at (310) 305-7198 or via e-mail at gil@gilcargill.com
