The Death of Solution Selling

We believe we are fast watching the death of solution selling. The era of discovering customer needs has passed; the era of teaching customer needs is upon us. If a customer has assessed their needs, you’re too late. That is the fatal flaw with solution selling.

Solution selling, made famous throughout the 1980s and 1990s, is predicated on discovering customer needs and aligning your solution to those needs. The theory holds that the best reps show customers how their solution better meets the customer needs than any competitor solution. Sellers do this by discovering ways to link customer needs to supplier solutions through the use probing questions, which allow salespeople to clarify how their solution best aligns.

The Shifting Eras of Sales Over Time

Recent advances in how customers purchase are completely undermining this method.

In the solution selling hay-day of the 80s and 90s, customers had to involve suppliers early in a purchase consideration. As needs became clearer to customers, suppliers had to be called upon to explain solutions and offer ideas to customers. Those days are long gone, and customers no longer need salespeople like they once did.  

The amount of information customers have at their disposal has changed dramatically. Once a customer has understood their needs, they are able to quickly assess options and suppliers by tapping into social media, the internet, a network of purchasing consultants, subject matter experts, and industry influencers and quickly zero in on a solution. Compared to 10 years ago, it’s relatively easy for a customer to arrive at a set of requirements, a short list of suppliers, and an expected price all without supplier involvement.

Instead, our analysis and the considerable time we’ve spent with the world’s best salespeople have quickly led us realize the importance of teaching customers their needs has never been higher.

We look forward to entering this new era of selling solutions – the Insight Selling Era – with our members and sharing some of our findings along the way. Members, please register for our upcoming teleconference on The End of the Solution Selling Era.

For now though, let the inevitable debate begin – are we witnessing the death of solution selling as a method? How has the degree of information available to customer changed the purchase experience? How will the best sales organizations respond?