What sells an IT solution?
Well, a lot has been said and written about selling in general, and a lot as well on selling solutions. Here, I will give my overview on selling solutions, in particular – ICT solutions. Yes, I believe that there is a difference between selling, and solution selling in particular. And while you can sell product based on price or characteristics only (the product is the same as others, but cheaper… or has the same or higher pricing, but brings greater value to the owner), solution selling is more complex.
Solution selling is based on the Golden Triangle principle, which is often used to explain projects or processes that involve digital transformation or other disrupting changes in an enterprise: People – Processes – Technology (and in that particular order).
PEOPLE
Each and every sales opportunity is based on some human needs, and on human influences. The needs may arise from some business plans and strategies: the head of department X needs to cut the costs by 20% in the next 3 years. So, by selling your solution Y to Mrs/Mr X, you are actually helping her/him to achieve the given task. It means that you are not selling a digital transaction system with 3x larger throughput, but you are selling a solution to the given problem expressed in Mrs/Mr’s X business targets. The People factor may also be expressed as knowing the market situation regarding the solution you are selling, including your competition. While some people base their sales on explaining how and why the competition is bad or worse, I believe that it is not a good direction for a sales pitch. It tells nothing about how you will help solve the problem. A better way may be to discuss competition, even point out their strengths, which may give you more credibility in the other person’s eyes, as it will show that you know what you are talking about. This leads also to the point of turnkey solution: solving the client’s problem is not signing the delivery log, but actually helping her/him to achieve the expected result. That may involve working together with competition, delivering additional services (not originally planned) etc. The easiest quest in the People domain may sometimes be (after a mutually established trust relationship) to help your client to spend the budget :).
PROCESSES
A particular part of the People factor boils down to business processes. Implementing an IT solutions usually means that it will change (hopefully for the better) one or more processes in the company. It means that you are not selling Terabytes and Gigahertzes but some changes to BAU (Business As Usual). Sometimes it can be quantified, and sometimes not. Sometimes it’s just trend following (because everyone in the industry does it), sometimes it is regulatory, and sometimes it will speed up the process. Nevertheless, the point in the Process factor is that a good sales representative needs to know the business processes and problems of the client. If you are selling water meters to utilities, you should know the topics of water loss reduction and current regulatory trends; if you are selling ERP solution to an insurance company, you need to know how insurance companies work and what current trends in insurance are; if you are selling CRM to a hotel chain, you should know something about the latest trends in tourism. Remember that you are selling a solution, and a solution needs a problem that it solves, and the problem is somewhere in the process.
TECHNOLOGY
So, lastly we come to Technology. In the end, it is Technology that is sold, but it is implemented and used in a Process, where People are involved. Yes, you need to know technical details of the solution that you are selling, otherwise you may seem incompetent. But it is the least important factor in the Process of selling to the People. At least until Artificial Intelligence conquers People and Processes, but in this case again - someone will have to sell an AI solution in the first place :).