Customer Reviews

The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale

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Many of the same core concepts in this book were previously discussed in Thull's Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High! However, what we have here is a much sharper focus on two of the three objectives specified in the subtitle: close the value gap and increase margins while winning the complex sale. In the Foreword, Greg Lewin does a skillful job of explaining the need for this sequel, offering his own conclusions about customer value: "[begin italics] First, value should be added to the customer's entire business, not just a specific part of it...Second, the value created for your customer should be easily identified and owned by your customer...Third -- and this is the main objective of Thull's Prime Solution -- the value you promise must be delivered...Fourth, the `secret sauce' is the heart and soul of your organization -- the people! [end italics]" According to Thull, Prime Solutions deliver optimal results which leverage value to the highest level of each customer's business, ensure that customers are provided with the best answer to the given problem, and provide solution implementation and value-enhancement strategies that enable customers to achieve the ROI that they anticipated.

Presumably Thull agrees with me that getting beyond customer satisfaction and even loyalty to what is widely referred to as "customer evangelism" requires that what he calls "robust solutions" must be provided consistently, time and again, whatever questions must be answered, whatever problems must be solved. To sustain that relationship, therefore, Thull recommends three separate but interdependent protocols: value maximization of product, process, and performance; decision acuity which enables customers to recognize -- and thereby appreciate -- the tangible benefits of the solution(s) provided; and optimization of a measurable ROI. I agree with Thull that what he calls the Prime Solution Cycle (please see pages 179-194) requires a cross-functional effort; that is, communication, cooperation, and collaboration between and among all areas within the provider's organization.

In Part I, Thull explores the environment in which complex solutions must compete. Then in Part II, he shifts his attention to an analysis of how to translate the demands of that environment into the three protocols which define, guide, and inform prime solutions. Finally, in Part III, Thull responds to a question which each reader is probably asking as she or he arrives at page 125: "How can my organization develop and then deliver prime solutions to our own customers?" Four chapters are devoted to Thull's response. First, he recommends a process of discovery and engagement which will reveal opportunities among those prospects currently experiencing insufficiency of the value offered. Next, diagnose and quantify what is needed. Then, design and produce what will fill (solve) the given need. Finally, deliver, measure, and improve on the solution(s) In this context, I am reminded of Neil Rackham's acronym, SPIN, which suggests the nature and sequence of diagnostic questions to be asked to determine the Situation; Problem(s) to be solved; Implications (i.e. benefits of solution or negative consequences of non-solution); and Need fulfillment, immediate and on-going). Actually, once having carefully explained the diagnostic phase, Thull goes far beyond it. After the determination of need(s), HOW to design and produce a "robust" solution with cross-functional communication, cooperation, and collaboration? How to market it? How to deliver it? And then, how to ensure that the given customer derives maximum ROI...and knows it? Thull's answers to these questions will guide and inform his reader

When concluding this brief commentary as I have with others, I now presume to offer caveats. First, beware of what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton characterize as "The Knowing-Doing Gap" in the book which bears that title. More often than not, decision-makers fail to convert knowledge into action to achieve the desired results. In this context, I am reminded of Coach Darrell Royal's assertion that "potential" means "you ain't done it yet." By all means absorb and digest the information and counsel which Thull provides in abundance. You and your associates must then focus together on formulating and then providing what each customer needs. Also, when seeking buy-in within your organization, expect to encounter resistance to change initiatives. For example, resistance which Jim O'Toole characterizes in his book, Leading Change, as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom." If I understand Thull correctly (and I may not), he urges his reader to think in terms of cross-functional teamwork which involves customers as well as everyone within the provider's organization. Granted, that is an ambitious objective but I wholly agree with him that it is also an "achievable reality."

The Prime Solution begins with the simple observation that most complex products and services that are provided to business customers either fail to work at all . . . or fall well short of the sales promises upon which the investments were made. Anyone who has been near a major corporation knows that sad reality.

The Prime Solution goes past that sorry track record to suggest in detail how vendors need to change their sales, product and service offerings to become effective in terms of the customers' realities.

I thought that the book went beyond what I had read before on this subject. Basically, you need a new business model that customizes what you do for each customer (like Dell does) and fills in for any weaknesses that customers have in using what you offer (either by offering the necessary training . . . or becoming an outsourcing supplier).

The positive examples, unfortunately, were few and far between. Based on my own research I know that there are a lot more examples. I suspect that Mr. Thull wanted to use examples as illustrations rather than to give readers a broad view of what can be done.

The negative examples were almost all in the systems and process areas (such ERP and CRM) so I felt like this book would mean the most to those who are systems providers or integrators.

The book has several weaknesses that limit its potential value. First, there's a lot of repetition. You will hear about value gaps repeatedly . . . more than you want or need. John Kotter's book is almost a "seminal" one. And so on.

Second, most of the book is taken up with describing where selling and value delivery used to be . . . and shouldn't be any more. This material should have been edited down by about 80 percent.

Third, most of the benefit in the book comes from the last three chapters. It would have been nice if that material could have been developed in more detail with more examples. As a result, you may feel like you are reading a book with content about equal to 2-3 business magazine articles rather than a whole book.

However, any systems provider whose sales force is still selling unfounded promises for organizations that haven't taken the time to figure out how to really help customers will certainly learn a lot of useful lessons for this book. Let's hope those firms make this book required reading.

Some sales are not complex. You need gasoline and you find a station based on location or price or perhaps a brand name. But other sales are much more complex. When you are selling a product that doesn't yet exist, Boeing's next airplane perhaps, or Intel's next computer chip the task is much more difficult. You have to sell yourself, you have to sell your company's history, and the buyer has to make a decision based on other factors such as past experience with the company.

The problems come when the seller presents a value proposition, and the customer buys, that the resulting solution cannot deliver.

This book continues the story begun by the author in his best seller, Mastering the Complex Sale. It could well be titled, Delivering the Promise Made in the Complex Sale. The book is filed with stories from the real world where complex sales have paid off for both the seller and buyer.

Well written and informative.

Jeff Thull is a highly regarded consultant whose client list reads like a who's who of big business. He is also the author of the insightful book, Mastering the Complex Sale. Does this new volume live up to the promise of that one? It depends on what you are seeking. Given that its title, The Prime Solution, sounds like a brand of steak sauce, be prepared to chew your way through terms like "decision acuity" (i.e., help your clients understand what's really going on), "solution opportunities" (i.e., answers) and "value promise delivery" (i.e., implementation). Such stylistic nuisances aside, the book diagnoses and documents a "value gap," the shortfall between the value that buyers receive versus what they feel they bought. Thull attributes this gap primarily to flaws in how providers of business-to-business products design, sell and execute their complex "solutions" or offerings. He suggests ways to address those flaws, along with many useful cases and good practical advice for consultants, particularly in the last three chapters. We recommend this book to experienced consultants who sell solutions. Our one caveat: just don't beef about the vocabulary.

Almost every company states in their mission that they are "customer-focused". It is "what" every company aspires to be, but in my experience, very few companies know "how" to accomplish this objective. "The Prime Solution" tells you "how" better than any book or article I have read in 30 years of business.
Research has shown over 90% of innovation arises from new solutions to customer challenges. If you believe, as I do, that most organic and self-sustaining growth arises from innovation (product, service, solution, and/or business process), then a "roadmap" for bringing all of your functional resources together to meet and solve your customers' challenges will be the key to future profitable growth. "The Prime Solution" quite simply is that roadmap.

This book has enlightened me to on Solution Selling. It is a concept I was familiar with but the book really breaks it down into wonderful real world examples that allows you to put all of the pieces together and walk away feeling you have learned a substantial amount.

A profound truth is captured in a quote by sales strategist Jeff Thull who says, "Spectacular success is always preceded by unspectacular preparation." Thull wrote that his previous book, but expands that concept to a greater extent in his follow up book titled - "Prime Solution." Soundview highly recommends this book because it embodies the idea that there are many steps in the selling cycle that require constant attention as does the customer. In this latest work, Thull links unspectacular preparation with relationship development - which take a lot of time and investment, but tends to produce the intended result. Additionally, Thull offers insights and tactics to help solidify customer relations toward the ultimate goal of bringing congruency to what's promised and what's delivered to the end user. It's good advice for anyone who's willing to take it.

This book is real and relevant - it describes success and failures and a prescribed process to get beyond the solutions fad and posturing to transformed companies

I couldn't put this one down!!! I am in a "complex sales" industry and the group that I head up are working on implementing Jeff Thull's Prime Solutions, based upon his Diagnostic Business Development system.

I read "Mastering the Complex Sale" (another must read), and will be diving into Jeff's other book, "Exceptional Selling"

I know for a fact that the information that I garnered from "Prime Solutions" will be our differentiating factor from our competition and will put us into the leadership quadrant of IT consulting companies here in our region.

Thanks Jeff for a great book!!!!!

Cheers
Michael Keen
Sr Solutions Architect
Enteprise Architecture Group