What to sell: Solution or IT?

IT guys are so stubborn that after repeatedly telling them not to sell IT but sell solutions of problems which customer face, they still sell technology jargon. 

I was little disappointed as a customer with a website: I was looking out for an online system to make test or even classes too. I found a site that provides online LMS.

1.  Under Functions or features I saw the icons and without doing mouse over on each of them I did not know where was what I was looking out for.

2.  First column, first row looks like search but when I do mouse over it says dashboard. Am I interested in this first or interested in types of test papers, subjects, courses or something close to learning than a dashboard/report first.

3.  First column second row, I mouse over and it says Cloud, oh my god, I am looking out for learning solution and it is selling me cloud (may be this site in on cloud but how does it matter to me as a learner or trainer). Is it my first priority to buy a learning system which is on cloud. It is his business if he can handle it on cloud or without cloud, as a customer why should I care. Even if there is an advantage of it being on cloud, it comes later after I see the core thing learning system provides me what I need. 

4.  Responsive design …. And blah blah blah …..

Example of a problem and solution: You can make payment to anyone on the go, smallest amount, easily, easily, easily ………….payment, on the go, easily ……… and you have Paytm :)

Did we see QR code or mobile anywhere above. To make it easy it uses mobile and there are two options for selecting payee: QR or his mobile number. Simple?

This is why selling digital solutions is difficult.

Take an example of an IT guy Bob who tries to sell technology to a customer and the customer says where is the solution? Why do you want to sell it to me? Do you know what is my problem? and Bob says "we will implement it in Python, we know bag of words in python, machine learning, AI, Spring Boot" and Mr customer gets scared "Oh my got without knowing whether I have stomach pain or heart problem this guy has already decided to operate my heart". Customer can really get scared. He says "thanks a lot , I am pleased to meet you". Bob feels happy, and says "meeting went well, client appreciated us". 

Another example Bob goes to a customer in response to an RFP and customer says “Oh I have floated an RFP, then you are not selling, I am buying. You can’t sell, you will implement. A consulting firm had sold me this idea and provided me next steps, now I will give you implementation of it in java/php, AWS ………”

Core need first, technology later/