Never sell just a product or a service, always bundle and sell a solution.

Why? Because products can be compared very easily, solutions cannot be. eg if I sell a mobile phone or a computer by itself, it can be compared to other competitors easily. But I put in an element of home service, warranty, replacement etc and hey it is suddenly difficult to compare it to others.

So what are the advantages of solutions selling:

a. Difficult to compare services, easier to compare products.

b. Customer loyalty increases as adding a service component ensures that the service provider understand the needs of the customer better. This increases switching costs for the customer and increases customer loyalty.

c. Larger revenues: Adding services and selling solutions usually involves selling multiple products. This increases the ticket size of the sale, and though it increases the selling cycle, the overall impact of sales productivity is higher.

d. Lower attrition of Sales team: Solutions selling is more challenging than selling boxes. The sales team learns more and finds the job more challenging as there is learning happening. Take the following example.

What can a solution do for a client company:

a. Reduce costs.

b. Do something better.

c. Reduce time taken to do a process.

Lets take just one example of reducing costs for a client. Any outsourcing of a process can have the following impact on costs saved:

a. Acquisition costs: price, prepurchase evaluation, shopping time, paperwork, mistakes in orders, travel costs.

b. Possession costs: interest, taxes, insurance, storage, installation, handling, quality control, obsolescence.

c. Usage costs: Downtime, labour, training, replacement, disposal, etc

A good salesperson would do his research and actually quantify the precise value of each of the above cost heads and the quantum of savings that he can bring about for his customer.

This whole process results in terrific learning and growth for the salesperson and is actually a very effective retention tool.

...........based on ideas discussed in a training workshop for a large b to b sales company.