Solutions

I have talked about not selling boxes (or "catch all" products) but instead selling solutions. I like to refer to selling solutions as problem-based selling because it requires us to solve a problem instead of calling our "box" a solution.

But, the first question is, "What is a box?"

Well, I don't think that a box is related to any one, specific industry. I think of a box as just about any commoditized product. It could be as un-technologically advanced as a toothbrush (although with the advertising, you'd think that all toothbrushes are "space age" technology, but I'll save that for another rant.) A box can be as technologically advanced as a server, MRI machine or jet. The box is simply anything that someone tries to sell as a fix-all or catch-all product for a given situation.

In my industry, the box tends to be a copier or printer. The company selling the product will advertise that they "have recently purchased a large number of 50 page per minute copiers and we're passing the savings on to you." Well, what if you need a 40 page per minute device or a 60 page per minute device? "That doesn't matter, we have this one "catch-all" product and we going to sell you this one box. Period." continue reading...

So many companies now are talking about solutions. Is that really what they are providing? I think that most companies are selling "boxes." A lot of people talk about solution selling but in the end the solution they try to sell ends up being whatever they happen to have on their shelf; isn't that really a box sale?

Evidentially, I am not the only one that feels this way about the technology industry. Tom Foremski at the Silicon Valley Watcher pointed out the same thing with HP in a post he wrote titled Is HP an IT services company? He points out:

Whenever I used to hear Ann Livermore, or Carly Fiorina, the message over the past seven years has been that HP is an IT solutions company. I didn't hear a thing about IT solutions, just a bunch of stuff about application performance from HP operating systems and servers. I didn't hear about any specific applications, just "average" applications, nothing about IT solutions of any kind.

In my opinion, most everyone that talks about "solutions" are really just relabeling their "boxes." If you want to sell a solution, you really need to focus on the problem first. If you don't look at the business problem your product solves, then there is no way, in good conscious, that you can call what you provide as a solution. Sounds to me like HP has fallen into its old model of pushing products... does that surprise anyone? continue reading...

So often, we look for solutions, but don't even know what the problem is.What solution do you want to implement? What are you working on to change?

Last week I talked about the end of the paper trail as we know it. I talked a bit about making changes in your office to stop using so much paper. Changing for the sake of changing isn't necessarily the right thing to do. We really need to look at what we are trying to accomplish before we make any changes. The only way that we can really know what to change is to figure out what we are doing right now. We need to analyze our current processes and then find ways to improve.

Figure out the problem, consider solutions to those problems and only make changes if the solution improves your problem. If we can't improve, then we shouldn't make a change. continue reading...