Doing Solution Sales Training Right Keeps Your Pipeline Filled

Doing Solution Sales Training Right Keeps Your Pipeline Filled
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Solution Sales Training To Combat the Never-Ending Sales Pressure
Solution sales training experts agree that sales performance pressure never stops.  Even after closing a big deal, few successful salespeople who sell complex and consultative solutions spend much time resting or in self-congratulations because they know that, in order to succeed, they must focus on the next opportunity.

That’s why high stakes solution selling is only for those who are bold, ambitious, confident, and, yes, driven to perform.

Where to Focus to Grow Your Pipeline
Solution sales training experience tells us there are ways to make your job easier and keep your pipeline filled with real opportunities even while you spend less time prospecting. Surprisingly, it’s not about building lots of new relationships; it’s about strengthening and deepening the relationships you already have with your ideal target clients.

Your Client’s Most Pressing Problems
We assume you have attended business sales training and know about the solution selling process whereby you don’t focus on features that may or may not suit your client but, instead, on how you can solve your client’s most pressing problems in a way that makes sense. Top sales managers know that top solution sellers:

  • Learn all they can about their client’s business, the issues they face, and what help they need to truly succeed.
  • Focus on what matters to the client and what they can do to support their personal and professional success.
  • Care and are genuinely interested in their customer’s business.
  • Help to create value throughout the entire sales process.

Where Not to Take the Wrong Turn
More often than not, if sellers are customer-centric and the opportunity fits, the deal will close. And it is here that so many salespeople take the wrong turn. Instead of continuing to nurture the relationship and ensure that the customer is satisfied with the solution, they move on to the next deal. In so doing they miss a huge opportunity to make their lives easier and more predictable.

Harvest and Grow Current Accounts
Sound customer relationships are based on trust. Customers buy from you because they trust the promises you and your company have made to help them to succeed. But if you quit the scene, how do you know those promises have been kept?

If your promises fell short, you could lose your integrity in the customer’s eyes and the chance to sell there (or into their extended network) again. You need to:

  • Stay connected not only to follow up on the sale but also to continuously earn and deepen the trust they have placed in you.
  • Stay invested in the relationship.
  • Be accountable by ensuring that the solution you sold has delivered on the promises you made.
  • Share context to make sure that those in your company who are in charge of delivery thoroughly understand the customer, why they bought, and what they need.
  • Stay in touch with both your customer and your delivery team to ensure satisfaction and that the stated outcomes have been achieved.

Earn Internal and External Referrals
This is how to become a trusted business advisor while building long lasting client relationships. Done well with the customer’s best interests at heart, you earn the right to ask not only about future needs but also for sales referrals.  Referred customers close an average of 50 percent of the time and happy customers are:

  • Less costly to serve
  • More likely to bring more business your way
  • More willing to refer you to others who need your expertise.

The Bottom Line
While many solution sales training programs advocate cold-calling and marketing techniques to meet aggressive sales quotas, what more productive source of leads could you tap into other than your own satisfied customers?

Want to learn more about the steps required to generate more qualified sales referrals?  Download How to Sell Through Networking and Referrals to Grow Faster

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