From Solution Selling to Future Selling - Why selling sustainable competitive advantage is better than selling just solutions

1. From Solution
Selling to Future
Selling
Why selling sustainable competitive advantage
is better than selling just solutions

2. Once upon a time, marketers and salespeople sold
products and services
Evolution of sales

3. Evolution of sales
But then, customers’ problems became more and
more complex
And so did products and services

4. So vendors took a more empathetic approach and
shifted focus towards understanding customers’
problems and reducing their pain-points.
And they crafted the Solution Sales approach,
pioneered in 1980s. A solution is a complex
combination of products and services, often built in
association with other vendors.
Evolution of sales

5. Solution sales worked.
But now it won’t.

6. The state of today
Today, the pressures on your customers are
manifold – Market, Technology, Socio-economic
factors.
So the very nature of customers’ problems is
changing at an unprecedented pace.

7. The state of today
Purchase decisions are being made differently and
by more informed people.
Customers today are much smarter in figuring out
the solutions for themselves even before they
approach a supplier.
Then they let the suppliers fight on price.

8. The state of today
“Solutions” are getting outdated very quickly. By the
time you develop them, the problem statement itself
changes.

9. So what do you
do?

10. As a company,
Sell future to your customers*. Sell
insights. Sell competitive advantage. Be a
thought leader, an expert on trends. Tell
your customers how you can help them
win not only today but also tomorrow.
1
2 Go agile and be open to changes in scope.
*“Get involved even before an RFP is written” is not enough.

11. As a sales rep,
Do not claim to be someone who “understands” all their
problems and has a magic bullet for each one of them. Rather,
take a participative approach.
1
2 Behave as a facilitator, not as a savior.

12. Let the price live!
KAMLESH PANT
kamlesh.pant@prepkart.com
And finally…
kamlesh_pant2007@pgp.isb.edu