A veteran sales consultant explains how to turn the solutions-selling dream into real profits

For some printing and imaging practices, solutions-selling strategies never progress beyond the buzz word stage. Disappointing reactions by customers and low profits leave some solution providers questioning the time and money they invested in this new approach.

But problems typically result from implementation missteps rather than flaws in the solutions-selling philosophy, argues Darrell Amy, president of Dealer Marketing Systems, an office-equipment marketing services firm based in Little Rock, Ark., and creator of the Document Solutions Specialist Boot Camp.

In the following interview, Amy discusses the mistakes solution providers make when their solutions-selling strategies fall flat and what it takes to field a solutions-savvy sales force.

Printing & Imaging Solutions and Services: What's the catalyst that usually brings solution providers to an organization like yours — are they already seeing profit problems or are they trying to be proactive and head them off?

Darrell Amy: Many hardware resellers have tried to get into the software business but just haven't been successful. They get frustrated because they've invested in people and infrastructure to support software-driven solution sales, but then they don't see the returns they were expecting. They come to use saying, "I know people are buying this stuff, but no one's buying it from me. What do I need to do differently?"

P&I: What mistakes are those companies making?

Amy: The fundamental mistake many resellers make is they are approaching the software business as a product sale in the same way they've been approaching the hardware business for many years. In the hardware business you tell customers, "Our printer makes better prints. Our printer runs faster. Our printer is less expensive." So when many resellers talk about "solutions" they start talking about a long the list of software features, advantages and benefits. But software is typically not purchased as a product. Software is just a tool to solve a business problem. The heart of solutions selling is identifying business problems that [solution providers] can solve. I like to say that you are an empty shirt in the solutions business until you understand your client's business problems.

The way to sell hardware and software in today's marketplace is to identify business problems and based on that, you come up with an ideal situation and then apply the software and hardware technology that will make that ideal situation become a reality.

P&I: Is there any way to quantify the benefits of the solutions-selling approach? How much more profitable might my business be?

Amy: Here's one way to look at it. Say you're a reseller with a thousand customers and each year 250 of them buys $10,000 in products. Over four years, that makes you a $2.5 million per year business. Now say you grow each one of those numbers 10 percent using a solutions approach. Now the average annual sales total is $11,000. You sell to 367 customers a year since now they're buying on a three-year cycle. Over the next four years that would make you a $3.84 million business. So by making slight improvements in each one of your key business drivers, you'd dramatically grow your business.

So in a highly competitive market where it's usually a dog fight for a share of a shrinking pie, the solutions opportunity opens the window to make incremental improvements in each of those business drivers. All of a sudden you can see a dramatically positive impact on your business.

P&I: What are the first steps solution providers need to take to make that transition to solutions selling?

Amy: It involves sitting down with someone [at the customer site] who's got a vested interest in the business itself — a C-level person or a departmental head. Then you need to frame the discussion appropriately. A challenge for many resellers is that clients may see them only as a hardware reseller. So it's very important early in the discussion for resellers to say to customers, "You know us as a hardware company, but really what we specialize in is helping clients solve some of their business-process challenges."

From there the discussions focus on the customer's business objectives, how the business currently works, what are the points of frustration, and how the company wishes it could work.

P&I: Does the solutions provider's sales staff need to change how it works?

Amy: Many salespeople in the print and imaging industry are becoming overwhelmed with the growing complexity of the technology they sell — the technical aspects not only of multifunction products but also all the software that goes with it.

However, many resellers are finding success by telling their sales people, "We are going to stop trying to make you into technical experts. Instead, we want to make you experts in understanding business processes and business challenges." So the sales person may tell a customer, "Hey, I'm not a technical person. But we've got an excellent technical staff back at the office. In the meantime let me ask you this: If we could take this business problem and make it go away, would you be interested in learning more?"

Once the sales person uncovers a business problem they could then bring the technical person in to architect a solution for that client. After all, real-estate agents don't build houses, they don't handle title insurance, they don't originate mortgages. What they do is find someone with a problem and then marry them with the solution. As our industry becomes more and more complex technically, sales people become less and less technical gurus and more generalists in brokering solutions to business problems.

P&I: How do sales reps react to this kind of change?

Amy: They realize they can breathe a deep sigh of relief when they realize that they don't have to be technical experts to sell document solutions. The decision makers that they are talking to are typically more involved in business challenges than technical challenges, so when we train sales reps to discover business problems, they end up having much more intelligent discussions with their clients.

P&I: It sounds like the key to making this work is starting the customer discussions with that upper-executive level.

Amy: Absolutely. Being historically a hardware-driven industry, we haven't been able to get as much traction as the sales training gurus have told us we should get with the top executives at our accounts. So a lot of times the sales rep ends up talking to people down a few levels in the organization, and even worse, sometimes appealing to the purchasing department or to a lower level IT person. The exciting thing about the solutions-selling value proposition is it's an opportunity to open doors at the top level of new accounts. It's also a fantastic model to help resellers grow new accounts in an industry that, on the hardware side, is seeing flat or declining growth in some cases.