I recently read this article in the Harvard Business Review that flatly announced the death of solution sales. As a solution salesperson by training, it obviously piqued my interest.
After reading it, I had an epiphany: the current shift shouldn’t have marketers worrying about solution sales’ demise. Instead, we should be excited about the birth of inbound sales!
As the article states, and as I’ve come to find out in recent years, the modern customer no longer needs marketers to go through the tedium of setting of problems for our products and services can solve. Today’s consumer is informed. They know what their problems are. They come to US to help solve them.
Consumers today use the internet to do much of the legwork that a solutions salesperson traditionally would do for them. This means marketers rarely have to deal with the demoralizing tedium of cold-calling, knocking on doors or setting up meetings with prospects who are, frankly, not in the mood to be sold to.
A more informed consumer base means that an astonishing 60% of customers already know what solutions they’re looking for. So, if you’re not fast-forwarding your marketing premise to tell them precisely how you aim to solve their problems, you stand little to know chance of winning their business.
Here are 3 things marketers must do to embrace the inbound marketing phenomenon:
#1. Create content that speaks to an informed consumer.
How do you address the person who understands, at least from a basic standpoint, the types of solutions you bring to the table; one who's been researching their business problems and the possible solutions that exist?
How can you speak to a prospect that knows that solutions exist to their problems but don’t quite understand what those solutions would and should entail?
These are the questions you should be asking yourself as you work to create your websites, brochures, landing pages, social media pages and posts, emails, blogs and every other piece of written, posted and postmarked correspondence between your company and the consumer.
Today’s customer already has a clear vision of their goal. What you need to provide is the content that drives them to that goal. What does your customer want? What does your customer need? How do you stack up?
If all of your outbound content attracts that an informed inbound consumer – you’re capturing prospects that are considerable closer in the buying cycling than a “tire kicker” that’s merely sniffing around.
#2. Enact a great system for capturing leads.
So, let’s say you’ve excelled at step one and have content that attracts all of the right prospects. You’ve proved you have some value to offer. Congratulations!
But, what are you doing to prove your value is actually satisfying a need? How are you working to capture that prospect as a lead?
This is what I call the “So What?” phase of inbound marketing. The consumer comes to you as informed, which means they’re also a bit skeptical. “So, what?” they said to themselves, “Why would I do business with this firm as opposed to all of the others I’ve discovered in my research?”
This is obviously a critical point in the sales cycle. Are there downloads you can provide to support the business problem, goal setting and the matching of your solutions to that business problem?
These super-informed leads need consistent and quality nurturing through the buyers process.
#3. “Out-market” the competition.
This can arguably be a subset to step #2, but I’m giving it equal importance. Why? Because when your consumer comes to you informed, you can bet they’re know about your competition – or at least intend to check them out while they’re vetting you.
So, are you prepared to tell leads how you stack up to the competition? Nurture them with content about your value proposition, about your organization and define other ways that you have value so that you remain forever ahead of your competitors in that lead’s mind.
The conversation between marketer and consumer has forever changed.
So, are you a stubborn solution salesperson, still sitting around wondering if you can hand out brochures to anyone who will listen? Or, are you waking up to the fact that there’s no one left to hand those staid brochures out to?
I, for one, am embracing this new era of inbound marketing – and am doing all that I can to serve the empowered and informed modern consumer. If you’d like to learn more about the strategies that are working for me, shoot me an email at mparent@inbound281.com.