Solution Selling: Creating Buyers in Difficult Selling Markets

While I am sure that even experienced sales people can get something out of Solution Selling, I would particularly like to recommend the book for people new to the field and unsure how to proceed. I am an experienced consultant who has just taken on sales and market development responsibilities within my company. I had a definite idea of what sales meant, and I was not at all sure that I liked it. One of my colleagues recommended Solution Selling as a good book to help build some perspective on my new position. Many people talk about solution sales, but when you come right down to it they do little more than attempt to move hardware. I was delighted to see the same techniques and skills that I use in consulting coming back as the sales skills in the Bosworth book. His steps and tools seem both intuitive and logical. I have a feeling that this is a book that I will be going back to in the coming year!

Once you have read it, you would want to share it with others. This is how good Michael Bosworth's book "Solution Selling" is. From clarifying the difference between Features, Advantages and Benefits (which a lot of sales people still mixed up), to complex solution selling process, the book has given losts of good illustration with practical examples. Especially in "3 levels of buyers needs", "10 faces of buyer pain", "Price Negotiation" etc. The book uses the buyers' prespective to help readers to understand what the buyers think at each stage in their decision process which is a good way to demonstrate his theory behind.Solution selling is a long and complex process, with the approach and process Bosworth described, it helps a lot in defining the actions and precautions we need to take in day to day solution selling process.If I can only pick one of the chapters in the book, I must recommend you to read, at least, how Bosworth uses the "9-block vision processing model" to see solution selling in the buyer's viewpoint, steps by steps showing what a solution sales/consultant should react in response to different level of the buyer's pain. If I have knew/bought this book earlier, I might not need to spend my last few years going through the hard way. It is definitely a book to read and the book to keep ...

In my estimation, this book picks up where the New Strategic Selling, the New Conceptual Selling, and Successful Large Account Management leave off. The first three books are also excellent and focus on the strategic aspects of selling and marketing. This book is focused on the tactical aspects of selling and sales management with a good primer on negotiating with buyers.

I own an agency for OD/HR consulting and have read HUNDREDS of books, manuals etc on selling. I am especially interested in books about selling high dollar intangibles (HR consulting is incredibly intagible). This book is by far the best book I have ever read for this type of selling. If you sell these intangibles, you must read this book. HOWEVER, in order for these ideas to actually be effective, you must plan on implementing the ideas and putting in a lot of work. Bosworth shows you, tells you, gives you an outline, gives you specific questions and just about anything else you could need to be successful after implementing his process. But this is not a book you can simply read and be successful. It takes practice, practice, practice.Since I have institued his process in my selling (and I STILL practice the process), my sales calls have dramatically improved. Most notibly, Bosworth shows you how to position yourself and ask questions in such a way so that the customer feels in control of the process. I actually have had prospects close themselves.The ideas and plans in 'Solution Selling' require a great deal of hard work for the sales person to implement, but trust me, it will pay off. Not only that, if you love sales like I do, it will help sales be fun again.

I read the book the first time for enjoyment. Then I read it again to help me start implementing solution selling. If you sell high value high dollar software or services this is a must read. In fact, I work with several sales people in my company that use the techniques in this book and they have been extremely successful. The book is easy to follow and you will notice changes right away if you implement solution selling. It is really focused on controlling the buying process.