Customer Reviews

The Solution Selling Fieldbook: Practical Tools, Application Exercises, Templates and Scripts for Effective Sales Execution

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The Solution Selling Fieldbook is the perfect compliment to Keith Eades 2004 book, The New Solution Selling. The New Solution Selling is an excellent book destined to become a sales classic. However, in sales, having a great theory doesn't necessarily translate into becoming a great salesperson. The Solution Selling Fieldbook provides tools to effectively implement the sales process and sales strategies discussed in The New Solution Selling. The CD-ROM included in the back of the book makes it easy for the salesperson to personalize all of the worksheets and templates to his or her own territory.

Eades formula for sales success in The New Solution Selling is: Pain x Power x Vision x Value x Control = Sale. The authors of the fieldbook maintain that a successful sales call is a result of effective planning and research. Fortunately, the fieldbook provides all of the tools to effectively plan the sales call.

The fieldbook begins by helping salespeople identify areas of pain in their accounts. As the book points out, "no pain, no change." Discovering the pain is the most important step in the process because it influences everything else that happens in the sales call. The worksheets and examples in the fieldbook help the salesperson identify the "pain" in his or her accounts. An important issue to understand is that pain varies depending upon the key player's job responsibilities. Too often, salespeople focus on one player in the buying center and ignore the others. By providing a systematic format, the fieldbook helps the salesperson make sure that the key players in an account have been identified. While each key player has unique pain areas, the effects of the pain are felt at the company level. The fieldbook helps the salesperson create a pain checklist to illustrate how each key player's pain aggregates at the organizational level.

Of course, planning does no good unless the salesperson is able to talk with the key players in a prospective client's firm. Consequently, the fieldbook moves on to stimulating interest and provides many examples for how to do that in the initial call to a prospect. It also provides letter templates in the event that the initial contact is made by mail. Once contact is established, there is no guarantee that the key player(s) will realize his or her pain. As every good salesperson knows, just because s/he can identify the pain doesn't mean that the prospect willing to do something about it. The fieldbook provides job aids to help the salesperson get the prospect to acknowledge the pain.

Finding and developing the prospect's pain is important so that the salesperson can help create a vision for the solution. Value must be an integral part of this vision. The salesperson needs to lead the sales call with value propositions to stimulate interest. By getting the right kind of information during the sales call, the salesperson can verify and justify the value of the solution. Value justification should be stated in terms of benefits expected (increased profits, increased revenue, or decreased costs). And, as always, The Solution Selling Fieldbook provides templates and exercises to help the salesperson accomplish this difficult task.

In summary, The Solution Selling Fieldbook is an excellent "how to" book for implementing the contents of The New Solution Selling. Salespeople who use this fieldbook diligently should see an increase in overall sales.

Solution Selling is very effective in defining a model for the tactical part of a sales engagement - meaning, what you discuss with a customer when you call them on the phone and when you meet with them during a sales call. When executed properly, it helps you and your customer develop a shared vision of the tangible benefit your product or service can provide your customer, and it creates clear milestones toward purchase and implementation. The model is rigorous and must be enforced by management and supported by the operations and service portions of your company to be effective. It can help increase the accuracy of forecasting sales revenues. I believe that it is more applicable for developing new markets, for new products and services, than for creating a competitive edge for established commodity offerings. When combined with a good sales strategy model (i.e. Jeff Thull's "Mastering the Complex Sale"), Solution Selling will deliver a lot of value to your sales force. Read the book, but also take the training. There are no shortcuts in achieving effective sales.

Excellent resource. Good solid information with examples. Good flow to the information. Very practical application. Templates can be revised to fit your needs.

Buyers hate feeling manipulated and asking questions can feel like an interrogation painting the Buyer into a corner.

Also, salespeople can get lost in a sea of questions and lose sight of the story they are trying to sell.

Isn't it just easier to provide the Salesperson with the right message delivered through mini-stories to help the Buyer discover that the status quo is no longer acceptable. These stories work because they present a scenario that allows Buyers to develop awareness through their own sense of discovery. Buyers trust this discovery because they made it and they begin to trust the Story Seller for telling it. When the Buyer can picture the issues
in the real world scenario, it helps them see how the results may apply to them and they start to make sense- they gain insight. Stories transport the Buyer from the role of critic into the role of participant.

In short, Stories allow the Buyer to take your offering for a virtual mental test drive: Could you ask for more?

Our point of differentiation is that we feel that it's easier to help the Buyer decide to change through the use of use 5-20 mini-stories followed by a few basic qualification questions instead of 50-250 discovery questions.

Indeed, stories are easier to remember, faster to execute and more natural to deliver. This is nothing new, just look at the Bible, it's all about stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world. We know how to tell stories; we just have to make sure we tell the right ones. at InsightDemand

This is an excellent book. Totally on point. Every salesperson should read it!!

The ideas in this book seems to be applicable and the author has tried hard to provide tools and examples. But, it is one of the most complicated ever books on the topic of selling. B2B sales is difficult however, this book makes it even more difficult. The guide that the book provides as a road map to results is in itself a science topic. I would not recommend it.