May 2006

Solution selling, the leading business-to-business sales model for the last twenty years, is finding itself eclipsed. The notion of selling integrated solutions, rather than point products, has been so widely adopted that it no longer serves as a differentiator. What matters to business leaders today is not solutions but results.

In response, a group of global sales forces has adopted a new approach. Top companies like UPS, Toyota, and Nokia are increasingly organizing their selling efforts around the acceleration of their customers’ business results.

The idea behind solution selling has been that a buying company almost always needs more than a solitary product or service. It may need financing for the purchase, customized specifications or features, assistance with implementation, integration with existing systems, or ongoing training, support, and service.

Providing these enhancements has been useful to the buyer and has added handsomely to top-line growth for sellers. Offering all these enhancements still makes sense because customers expect and demand them. But they are no longer sufficient to support an enhanced value proposition.

What customers really want
Interviews with more than 100 executive-level buyers in global companies reveal how the world of buying—and, therefore, selling—is changing. In today’s increasingly competitive global markets, each purchase has to improve the buying company’s business and provide a return on investment. It has to accelerate the purchasing company’s success in achieving its goals. The purchase, the strategy, and the decision maker all have to prove themselves in 24 months or less.

Is the notion of accelerating your customers’ business results just spirited flag-waving or does it suggest genuine strategy? Our work with UPS, Toyota, and Nokia suggests the latter. These organizations have integrated the notion of accelerating customer business results into the operation of their sales forces.

At Toyota and Lexus, for example, salespeople call on the individual dealerships that purchase vehicles from the manufacturer. Historically, these salespeople were product experts. They knew more than anybody about each car’s features and specifications. Over time, they became solution sellers, offering assistance with advertising, merchandising, and financing vehicles.

Today, these salespeople are changing the face of the auto industry by becoming experts in each specific dealer’s individual business. That means understanding the dealer’s personal and business goals, the nature of their business cycle, their unique market and key competitors, and their financials, operating challenges, and strategies. The salesperson brings to the dealer a variety of ideas and best practices proven to work elsewhere that are relevant to this dealer’s specific situation and tailored to it. This approach is accelerating the adoption of successful strategies throughout the Toyota and Lexus dealer networks.

What leaders can do
Truly accelerating a customer’s business results is not a simple task. (But there is a silver lining for sales forces that pursue it: the complexity involved makes it harder for competitors to adopt similar approaches.) Pursuing a change of this magnitude requires initiative, diligence, and perseverance from the leader of the sales organization. Effective initiatives that we have seen include the following components.

1. Genuine passion for customers’ success. Customer focus is not an outcome of this new approach; it’s an entry ticket. A company that wants to adopt this new way of selling must already be focused on its customers, rather than itself or its product. But it must now go a step further. The sales force must become passionate about not just meeting each customer’s needs but helping each customer reach its own strategic goals. Salespeople in this new world closely monitor and celebrate their customers’ quarterly earning reports.
2. Business acumen. Product knowledge and sales execution skills are no longer sufficient. Salespeople in today’s leading sales organizations must be trained to understand their customers’ businesses at a deep level. That means being able to read financial statements, have conversations with CFOs, identify key business challenges, and speak like a consultant. World-class sales forces are increasingly making the development of business acumen a priority in the training of new hires. They understand the increasing importance of grooming business professionals first and sales experts second.
3. Focus on business challenges. Where the rubber hits the road, accelerating customers’ business results is about helping them overcome the challenges that lie between them and their goals. Helping customers achieve results faster is accomplished by removing or reducing the impact of obstacles in their paths. Leading companies are training salespeople to articulate how their products, services, and solutions address the unique business challenges each of their customers faces. Sales professionals at companies like UPS and Nokia increasingly have the business sophistication to describe how their services and products genuinely maximize cash flow, improve customer satisfaction, and foster operational excellence.
4. Customer-driven reorganizations. Leaders are advocating their customers’ individual needs within their own organization like never before. They connect functional leaders and staff in their organizations with similar individuals in their customers’ organizations. They share customer information and issues across their internal teams. They have reorganized their own organization into groups of professionals that meet the business needs of their customers.

We frequently encounter sales leaders who believe the way to improve their numbers is to make their salespeople more efficient: find more leads, make more sales calls, tender more presentations, and spend more time with customers. Leaders who instead invest in making their sales forces more effective—that is, better at achieving the results that matter most to their customers—yield better results and position their organizations more strategically for the future.