Selling: Are you really a solutions provider?
“We have the solution to your problems!”, “We are an end-to-end solutions-provider”. These are massive claims when you sit down and think about what is being said. The reality is that more often than not, a single company can provide a (or some) service(s), that will contribute to a bigger solution. So why are so many companies ashamed to say that they are enablers or contributors?
That being said, there are some great examples of the more modest approach..”INTEL inside”. What a great statement; it infers so much without stating it. The PC wouldn’t work as well if it wasn’t INTEL, Microsoft are fortunate to have our processors inside…the list goes on.
The problem with claiming that you are solutions-provider when you are not. is that you can never satisfy your customer. Worse, you start to believe your own hype.
If you think about the concept of the “Whole Product” described by Theodore Levitt, your generic product can only satisfy part of your customer’s full need. It is within your control to make sure that what you supply matches what the customer thought he or she was buying (Expected product), but it is most likely that you will need to add other services, functionality, support or other aspects of your offering to the generic product if you are to really offer a full solution to your customer.
From: Crossing the chasm - Moore
Beyond customer disappointment, what are the other implications of these claims? Probably at the top list is the simple fact that if you believe you have a complete solution offering you will not look any further than the limitations of your offering. This becomes a Catch-22; you don’t ask the questions therefore you don’t get the answers, or you probe only as far as you need to, to justify your partial solution. The result is that you may miss out on providing an “Augmented product” that could be within your capability to supply, or you do not play a key role in a bigger solution. Either way you are miss opportunities to grow.
Using this approach will encourage you to identify the needs that a customer is prepared to pay for, it also forms the natural basis for a sales strategy by helping you identify what you need to add or with whom to collaborate in order to achieve that goal.
As INTEL has proven there’s nothing wrong with being an enabler, and indeed gives you many different opportunities for growth. So, do you really want to be a solutions-provider?
