When moving from product to solution selling, is training the answer?

The short answer is no. You’ve likely had numerous experiences training and re-training, and re-training sales reps. It’s predictable. Twenty percent will respond positively to the training while 80% continue to struggle.

Sales reps and sales management often blame “the poor training” so new training is developed or purchased and the sales team is put through another round of training. The same 20% have a positive experience and become even more successful while the same 80% continue to underperform. Why?

Training won’t change the nature of your sales reps. Product Sales Reps have a different “mindset” than Solution Sales Reps. No amount of training will change their nature.

So What’s the Answer? Is There Hope?

There is a lot of hope and there are a lot of things Sales Managers can do to optimize sales when their sales processes move from Product Sales to Solution Sales. Let's look at three key steps to follow in order to optimize sales.

1. Identify those who have naturally moved into the Solution Sales Role. Provide them with simple coaching and mentoring as these are your best bet for being top performers.
   
   
2. Identify those who are struggling with the new Solution Sales Role. They know they are struggling. They feel inferior already. They may already be disengaged and want a way out.  They could already be bringing down the rest of your sales team and causing damage. Coaching, mentoring, training and more management time are not going to change their nature. The two options you have are to change their role, or ask them to leave. They didn’t turn into a bad rep - the job changed.
   
   
3. Use an analytics approach to quantify and visualize the mindset of your top Solution Sales reps. Compare this to your entire sales team to identify reps who are a close fit to this profile and who could benefit from more extensive training and coaching.

Solution Sales Reps are Born, Not Made

It’s possible (even easy) to measure and predict a sales rep’s mindset. This benefits everyone involved. When considering “why are sales reps struggling” in a Solution Sales Rep role, consider that it might be the person doing the selling before spending time and money on activities that will have little or no impact.

Greta Roberts is CEO of Talent Analytics, Corp, a leader in using analytics to optimize employee performance directly inside Salesforce.com as well as other business applications. Follow @TalentAnalytics on Twitter to learn more. 

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