Solutions Marketing: an Analysis of Effective Strategies

1) The main Four P's are now OVER

Blog description:

By this blog post I understand that the blog explains that world is progressing and the most basic frameworks that everyone has been taught are going absolute or old as this tells us how far the industry has diverged from what it was and grown and developed from products and services to what we call solutions.

Its the same thing we do with a little more addition of technology but now theres a whole different perception to it. We learn that we cannot focus on highly intangible and complex offerings as we don’t have the right metrics to measure the solutions offering.

We now have OVER which is focused on marketing solutions and measures and classify offering values correctly.

Analysis:

Since a Solution in a combination of products and services the 4 P’s still come into consideration as just describing the whole combination under the offering term in OVER maxes it too shallow to describe without sub classifications and details.

OVER can be the new addition to the 4P’s as a solution is a combination of Products services and intellectual property so we do need product metrics in place too. As the framework OVER only describes the solution in the offering and the rest is intangible values and I feel describing the product and service in one term under the offering gives really less clarification or depth to the framework.

As shown in the table, both the frameworks together make complete sense of what we are trying to sell and communicate. I think OVER is the perfect addition to the 4 P’s and it fills in all the gaps that were left out by the old framework due to lack of understanding or services and solutions back then.

2) Solutions Selling and the 4 most effective sales tools

Blog Description:

The companies that have made a shift from products or services to selling solutions realize that it is very challenging to do so. Due to change in the process of selling and the value delivered to the customer. There are four sales tools to support organized selling of the solutions

The Four sales tools for solutions

Sales Playbooks

A playbook focuses on providing right information with ease of understanding describing the problem and the solution along with reasonings and potential targets including other data that’s required case specific.

Competitive Battle Cards

These sheets contain information about competitors their strengths, weaknesses and other things like Key Value selling points, important target segments.

They help us understand what our competitors are strong in and what they fall short off.

Testimonials and References

References help in developing and building trust amongst buyers. We should Pick the right testimonials to convey what we want to. It helps in understanding whether the company that referred and the company that supported and followed the referral both received the same good value required by them.

ROI Calculators

These Indicators help evaluate and understand the investments required for a solutions offer. The sales force will be most effective in quantitatively measuring the benefits derived from offering the solution and making a go connection and easily communicating the same value to the buyers in decision process.

3) The solutions challenge

Blog Description :

The Business world has undergone a fundamental shift in the markets. The sellers are surrounded by competition and buyers have the upper hand in decision making and selection with little margin for any error. It’s a customer centric and customer-oriented world

Buyers demand is framed by the competitive reality or offerings in the market and they demand tremendously to provide strong business value in each transaction

Analysis:

Companies that shift to solutions have to undergo many changes structurally and operationally, they have to focus on either removing those staff that can’t transition with the change or keep this who can and replacing staff with the ones who are trained and experienced.

Some changed like looking for solutions with really high value and identifying the new type of opportunities to tap Into,

taking initiatives cross-organizationally to overcome business downs,

redefining value propositions and change the marketing program for solutions in the market.

4) Seven Steps to Differentiating Your Solutions

Blog Description :

Solutions are based on a customized model depending on the customer and his needs, every company that demands solutions requires account specific customization of the solution for the best benefits from it. Most solutions marketers make a common mistake in communication the true value of their solutions across channels and that is creating the message for their solution in which they fail to understand that their supposed differentiates are not really any different from the ones in the market or already known by the customers

Analysis :

Firstly Identifying your unique potential differentiators is key. You should know what really make you unique and not your supposed differentiators. Compare data with competitors create a High Low based differentiator grid

Creating a perception map of customers and potential clients is a must as it will guide all your research to fit into right spots for the final solutions marketing plan.

Integrating all these maps and data stats in the marketing strategy and planning will be of utmost importance to drive an effective communication of the message and value of the solutions offering.

4) The four engines of B2B marketing success

Blog Description:

Four Engines for B2B Marketing Success

Content Engine:

Due to the need for growth of content and betterment the marketing leaders realized the need to integrate the content engine which produces content for each stage of the buying cycle. For this we need thought leadership and its content to be able to build interest of the content and its reputation. Improve and support the activities that help content marketing like social media, digital marketing, lead generation, etc

Relationship Engine:

Business to business marketing rises & falls due to the company and its relationships with its customers, it future prospects, business partners, and markets influencers. The main idea is to build consistency and a focused approach to strengthen the critical stakeholder and other connections to get an increase in sales and loyalty along with market insight. This helps us understand what determines and maintains our relationship with our customers and their needs.

Lead Development Engine:

The increasingly long and convoluted purchase processes that B2B marketers face puts a premium on well organized systems for lead nurturing and management. No longer can we focus on just the early stages of generating leads and then throw them over the wall to sales. More and more, we need to stay in the game with longer term programs to develop and sustain opportunities in close coordination with sales. Content and relationship programs contribute substantially to this effort but someone also needs to own the overall system for lead development, including qualification, scoring, nurturing, and assessment.

Solutions Development Engine: