What do you think?
Rate this book
The New Solution Selling: The Revolutionary Sales Process That is Changing the Way People Sell
THE MARKET-PROVEN PRINCIPLES OF SOLUTION SELLING FOR TODAY'S HIGH-SPEED, HIGHER-PRESSURE SALES ENVIRONMENT The long-awaited sequel to Solution Selling , one of history's most popular selling guides Nearly 10 years ago, the influential bestseller Solution Selling literally rewrote the rules for selling big-ticket, long-cycle products. The New Solution Selling expands the classic text's cases, examples, and situations and sharpens its focus on streamlining the sales process to achieve greater success in fewer steps and a shorter time frame. Much in sales has changed in the past decade, and The New Solution Selling incorporates those changes into an integrated, tailored approach for improving both individual productivity and organizational return on investment. Written to enhance the results and careers of sales pros and managers in virtually any industry, this performance-focused book features:
300 pages, Hardcover
First published November 14, 2003
116 people are currently reading
414 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 3, 2021
This is a useful guide to one of the hottest subjects in sales: selling solutions, not products. Author Keith M. Eades offers a methodical, step-by-step approach to implementing a conversational approach to selling. The principles underlying "solution selling" are simple and straightforward, and the process is hard to fault, although it demands a great deal of record keeping and charting. The author’s explanation of the procedures gets a bit mechanical and jargon-riddled at times. But on the whole, getAbstract believes every salesperson is apt to find something of value in this book, even if it’s a reminder of what once was known but has been forgotten.
Takeaways:
To sell, you have to understand the buyer’s needs.
Nobody changes without pain.
Sometimes buyers are in pain but don’t know it or don’t understand it. That’s when the solution selling approach is most effective.
Don’t talk about products and features – draw the prospect out by asking questions.
You need to diagnose the prospect’s problems correctly before you prescribe a remedy.
By the time buyers seek solutions to their problems, they probably have made up their minds already about which solutions they want.
When you are not the first to call on a buyer, and have not shaped the buyer’s vision of a solution, your odds of succeeding in a sale are remote.
Don’t waste time and money chasing low-probability opportunities.
Negotiate firmly, hang tough and be ready to walk away.
With the right sales process, every salesperson can soar with the eagles.
Summary:
What is a Solution?
A solution solves a problem, or at least measurably improves it. The word measurable implies that there must be a "before" and an "after" separated by a point of change – the implementation of the solution.
"Solution selling" is a way of thinking and behaving that focuses on customers and their problems instead of on the sales organization and its products. Some salespeople do this naturally, but not the majority.
A sale is a series of defined, repeatable steps that, if performed well and consistently, will lead to expected results.
Generally, salespeople fall into two categories:
1. Eagles
These salespeople have good intuition and the ability to ask questions and converse. They make up 20% of the total population of salespeople.
2. Journeypeople
The other 80% of salespeople, who do not have these talents and abilities, rely on canned presentations and pitches, and on telling instead of asking.
Solution Selling uses pain to prospect and stimulate interest.
Buyers also fall into two categories. Innovators and early adopters account for 20% of buyers. Pragmatic, conservative and late adopting people account for 80% of buyers.
Therefore, simple multiplication shows you that:
4% of the time, eagles meet early adopters.
16% of the time, eagles meet pragmatic, conservative and late adopters.
16% of the time, journeypeople meet early adopters.
64% of the time, journeypeople meet pragmatic, conservative and late adopters.
Everyone knows that team sports require players to be in sync in order to play well and win championships. Companies and organizations are no different.
In other words, most sales calls match a salesperson who is neither intuitive nor a natural easy conversationalist with a very tough customer.
The Principles of Solution Selling
Several basic principles underlie solution selling:
To change, one must feel pain. There must be a level of discomfort.
One person or department’s pain affects the whole organization.
With the solution selling approach, you make a diagnosis before you write a prescription.
Pain can be unknown or known. When people recognize pain, they often seek a cure.
Prospects may be looking for a remedy or not looking. Those who are looking may not be the best prospects.
Solution selling emphasizes getting to prospects before they make up their minds to start looking for a remedy.
Buyers’ needs change over time. The buying decision has three distinct phases: definition of need, evaluation of options and assessment of risk.
Many salespeople believe that doing research is someone else’s job. That’s a big mistake.
Each salesperson should ask these questions about any prospect:
Does the prospect know about his or her pain?
Does the prospect have the power to decide on a solution?
Does the prospect see the solution the same way the salesperson does?
Does the solution offer real value and does the prospect agree that it does?
Can the salesperson do anything to control the buyer’s decision process?
The Sales Process
To make it easier for journeymen to sell like eagles, use a definite sales process. Implement a clear, standardized, repeatable and consistent system.
Salespeople become experts; they think they’ve seen this situation before. So when the buyer admits a problem, instead of taking time to diagnose the problem, they jump straight to prescribing a solution (telling their buyers what they should do).
Include these steps in every sales or sales management process:
Understand and explain the prospect’s buying process.
Align the sales process with the buying process.
Define measurable, identifiable objectives so you will know whether or not you have completed each phase of the process successfully.
Managers should make the right tools and assistance available.
Managers also should measure and reaffirm the process through a management system that keeps track of the likelihood of success.
How to Plan and Prepare
Solution selling begins before the sales call, with research and planning. Use research findings to identify and analyze companies that are likely prospects and to prepare a data sheet on each one.
We’re not trying to create robotic salespeople.
This fact sheet will include such information as:
The name of the company and a brief description of its business, history and market.
The company’s products and brand values or differentiating traits.
A brief, concise description of its position in the market and its identifiable problems.
A brief summary of its financial position and fiscal trend.A concise statement of the competitive situation in the prospect’s market.
Brief biographies of the members of the company’s leadership team.
A concise statement of the company’s main problem and what it needs to do to fix it.
To select a strategy, you first need to know what it is and how it is used.
After reflecting on this information, craft a message that addresses the issues that clearly concern the prospect. Before the first call, sketch a diagram of how pain from the problem flows through and affects the prospect’s entire organization. No part of any company is independent of the others. Research will reveal the locus of the prospect’s greatest pain. The salesperson who first demonstrates an understanding of the prospect’s situation will have an advantage over traditional salespeople who only seem to understand their own products.
How to Elicit Interest
Arousing a prospect’s interest is fundamental. You don’t do it by asking if the prospect is interested in your product. The answer will be no. Instead, ask the prospect to talk about what interests him or her. Your pre-call preparation will equip you with a good profile of the company, and your diagram of pain flow will help you craft questions that will make the prospect want to talk. Where and how do you prospect? Begin by tapping into your network.
Although there are many beneficiaries of your product in the prospect’s organization, there are probably few who can approve or make the actual purchase happen.
In descending order, the most powerful prospecting fields are:
Current customers – They know you and you’re already helping them, so be sure to ask them about any other problems you can help solve.
Referrals – Ask your customers to recommend prospects and to help introduce you.
Associations – Join a trade group to meet people and get access to information.
Social occasions – Work doesn’t have to stop when you leave the office.
Keeping control of the buying process and letting the buyer buy without pressure appear to be mutually exclusive, but they are not.
Prospect at seminars and trade shows. Promote your solution at seminars while you gather intelligence about the problems facing prospects in that industry. Trade shows can be valuable if you differentiate yourself from your competition with a display that highlights your solutions, not just your product.
Cold Calls
To be prepared to make a cold call, draft a short "Business Development Prompter" that allows you to state quickly:
Your name and your company.
The fact that this is a first call.
Your experience with the prospect’s industry.
Your experience with other executives on the level of the prospect.
Your understanding of the prospect’s critical problem or pain.
The fact that you have a solution.
One way to ensure that your final proposal wins the business is to have the customer review the proposal before it is due and take ownership of the document.
Close with a question that prompts the prospect to express interest. "Would you like to know more?" or "Are you curious" are good closing questions.
Making a Diagnosis
If the buyer has acknowledged pain, your first sales call will be diagnostic. If not, then spend the first part of the sales call getting to the admission of pain. Then, to make a diagnosis, ask questions.
Remember the principle don’t give without getting.
There are three types of questions:
Open questions – These questions allow the prospect to talk openly and freely. Their advantage is that they pose no threat and demand no commitment from the prospect. Their disadvantage is that they give control to the prospect.
Control questions – With these questions, the salesperson takes some control. You attempt to guide the prospect toward a predetermined conclusion. Use these queries cautiously because some buyers get uncomfortable when steered.
Confirmation questions – These questions establish the fact that the salesperson clearly does understand what the prospect has stated.
You have to compete and win day after day.
Sometimes you will reach the prospect after one of your competitors has all but sewn up the deal. Obviously it is better to be first, but what can you do when you aren’t? First, you must decide whether it is worth trying to compete. To make an honest evaluation, admit the probabilities of success and failure. Assess the opportunity. Ask yourself if you have a real competitive advantage. Then, select a competitive strategy you can discuss with your sales team.
Each of these four competitive strategies is appropriate in a different situation.
Head on – Appropriate only if your competitive advantage is overwhelming.
End run – Try to redefine the rules of the competition, and the prospect’s vision.
Partial victory – If you can’t win the whole deal, try for a piece.
Waiting – Try to slow the buyer down. Microsoft did this when it launched Exchange, its product for work groups. It pre-announced the release and asked buyers not to purchase Lotus Notes until Exchange was available. Many buyers complied.
Negotiation
The first rule is to negotiate only with decision makers. Hang tough. Remember:
The buyer will try to squeeze you. Expect at least four such attempts, and be ready to withstand them.
Don’t give up anything unless you get something in return.
Be ready to take it away. Just as buyers may take the deal away and give it to another salesperson, so you must also be ready to take your offer away by walking out. This is tough when the salesperson has a quota to meet and is coming up short. Sales managers should know that salespeople cannot negotiate effectively under such circumstances, and should plan to accompany them to the negotiation.
Launching your Solution Selling Process
To get started, dedicate inviolable time to prospecting. Analyze your top prospects and draft a profile of their pain. Chart your milestones, the steps that measure progress with each prospect. Draft a worksheet that indicates which milestones you have achieved with each prospect. Push to get your three top prospects to the halfway point in milestone achievement. Schedule calls with other prospects to define their pain further and diagnose their problem.
Get a second opinion from your manager about your calls with powerful prospects. Withdraw proposals that have no response within 30 days. Develop reference stories and cases each month. Don’t use old ones. Keep your material fresh.
Takeaways:
To sell, you have to understand the buyer’s needs.
Nobody changes without pain.
Sometimes buyers are in pain but don’t know it or don’t understand it. That’s when the solution selling approach is most effective.
Don’t talk about products and features – draw the prospect out by asking questions.
You need to diagnose the prospect’s problems correctly before you prescribe a remedy.
By the time buyers seek solutions to their problems, they probably have made up their minds already about which solutions they want.
When you are not the first to call on a buyer, and have not shaped the buyer’s vision of a solution, your odds of succeeding in a sale are remote.
Don’t waste time and money chasing low-probability opportunities.
Negotiate firmly, hang tough and be ready to walk away.
With the right sales process, every salesperson can soar with the eagles.
Summary:
What is a Solution?
A solution solves a problem, or at least measurably improves it. The word measurable implies that there must be a "before" and an "after" separated by a point of change – the implementation of the solution.
"Solution selling" is a way of thinking and behaving that focuses on customers and their problems instead of on the sales organization and its products. Some salespeople do this naturally, but not the majority.
A sale is a series of defined, repeatable steps that, if performed well and consistently, will lead to expected results.
Generally, salespeople fall into two categories:
1. Eagles
These salespeople have good intuition and the ability to ask questions and converse. They make up 20% of the total population of salespeople.
2. Journeypeople
The other 80% of salespeople, who do not have these talents and abilities, rely on canned presentations and pitches, and on telling instead of asking.
Solution Selling uses pain to prospect and stimulate interest.
Buyers also fall into two categories. Innovators and early adopters account for 20% of buyers. Pragmatic, conservative and late adopting people account for 80% of buyers.
Therefore, simple multiplication shows you that:
4% of the time, eagles meet early adopters.
16% of the time, eagles meet pragmatic, conservative and late adopters.
16% of the time, journeypeople meet early adopters.
64% of the time, journeypeople meet pragmatic, conservative and late adopters.
Everyone knows that team sports require players to be in sync in order to play well and win championships. Companies and organizations are no different.
In other words, most sales calls match a salesperson who is neither intuitive nor a natural easy conversationalist with a very tough customer.
The Principles of Solution Selling
Several basic principles underlie solution selling:
To change, one must feel pain. There must be a level of discomfort.
One person or department’s pain affects the whole organization.
With the solution selling approach, you make a diagnosis before you write a prescription.
Pain can be unknown or known. When people recognize pain, they often seek a cure.
Prospects may be looking for a remedy or not looking. Those who are looking may not be the best prospects.
Solution selling emphasizes getting to prospects before they make up their minds to start looking for a remedy.
Buyers’ needs change over time. The buying decision has three distinct phases: definition of need, evaluation of options and assessment of risk.
Many salespeople believe that doing research is someone else’s job. That’s a big mistake.
Each salesperson should ask these questions about any prospect:
Does the prospect know about his or her pain?
Does the prospect have the power to decide on a solution?
Does the prospect see the solution the same way the salesperson does?
Does the solution offer real value and does the prospect agree that it does?
Can the salesperson do anything to control the buyer’s decision process?
The Sales Process
To make it easier for journeymen to sell like eagles, use a definite sales process. Implement a clear, standardized, repeatable and consistent system.
Salespeople become experts; they think they’ve seen this situation before. So when the buyer admits a problem, instead of taking time to diagnose the problem, they jump straight to prescribing a solution (telling their buyers what they should do).
Include these steps in every sales or sales management process:
Understand and explain the prospect’s buying process.
Align the sales process with the buying process.
Define measurable, identifiable objectives so you will know whether or not you have completed each phase of the process successfully.
Managers should make the right tools and assistance available.
Managers also should measure and reaffirm the process through a management system that keeps track of the likelihood of success.
How to Plan and Prepare
Solution selling begins before the sales call, with research and planning. Use research findings to identify and analyze companies that are likely prospects and to prepare a data sheet on each one.
We’re not trying to create robotic salespeople.
This fact sheet will include such information as:
The name of the company and a brief description of its business, history and market.
The company’s products and brand values or differentiating traits.
A brief, concise description of its position in the market and its identifiable problems.
A brief summary of its financial position and fiscal trend.A concise statement of the competitive situation in the prospect’s market.
Brief biographies of the members of the company’s leadership team.
A concise statement of the company’s main problem and what it needs to do to fix it.
To select a strategy, you first need to know what it is and how it is used.
After reflecting on this information, craft a message that addresses the issues that clearly concern the prospect. Before the first call, sketch a diagram of how pain from the problem flows through and affects the prospect’s entire organization. No part of any company is independent of the others. Research will reveal the locus of the prospect’s greatest pain. The salesperson who first demonstrates an understanding of the prospect’s situation will have an advantage over traditional salespeople who only seem to understand their own products.
How to Elicit Interest
Arousing a prospect’s interest is fundamental. You don’t do it by asking if the prospect is interested in your product. The answer will be no. Instead, ask the prospect to talk about what interests him or her. Your pre-call preparation will equip you with a good profile of the company, and your diagram of pain flow will help you craft questions that will make the prospect want to talk. Where and how do you prospect? Begin by tapping into your network.
Although there are many beneficiaries of your product in the prospect’s organization, there are probably few who can approve or make the actual purchase happen.
In descending order, the most powerful prospecting fields are:
Current customers – They know you and you’re already helping them, so be sure to ask them about any other problems you can help solve.
Referrals – Ask your customers to recommend prospects and to help introduce you.
Associations – Join a trade group to meet people and get access to information.
Social occasions – Work doesn’t have to stop when you leave the office.
Keeping control of the buying process and letting the buyer buy without pressure appear to be mutually exclusive, but they are not.
Prospect at seminars and trade shows. Promote your solution at seminars while you gather intelligence about the problems facing prospects in that industry. Trade shows can be valuable if you differentiate yourself from your competition with a display that highlights your solutions, not just your product.
Cold Calls
To be prepared to make a cold call, draft a short "Business Development Prompter" that allows you to state quickly:
Your name and your company.
The fact that this is a first call.
Your experience with the prospect’s industry.
Your experience with other executives on the level of the prospect.
Your understanding of the prospect’s critical problem or pain.
The fact that you have a solution.
One way to ensure that your final proposal wins the business is to have the customer review the proposal before it is due and take ownership of the document.
Close with a question that prompts the prospect to express interest. "Would you like to know more?" or "Are you curious" are good closing questions.
Making a Diagnosis
If the buyer has acknowledged pain, your first sales call will be diagnostic. If not, then spend the first part of the sales call getting to the admission of pain. Then, to make a diagnosis, ask questions.
Remember the principle don’t give without getting.
There are three types of questions:
Open questions – These questions allow the prospect to talk openly and freely. Their advantage is that they pose no threat and demand no commitment from the prospect. Their disadvantage is that they give control to the prospect.
Control questions – With these questions, the salesperson takes some control. You attempt to guide the prospect toward a predetermined conclusion. Use these queries cautiously because some buyers get uncomfortable when steered.
Confirmation questions – These questions establish the fact that the salesperson clearly does understand what the prospect has stated.
You have to compete and win day after day.
Sometimes you will reach the prospect after one of your competitors has all but sewn up the deal. Obviously it is better to be first, but what can you do when you aren’t? First, you must decide whether it is worth trying to compete. To make an honest evaluation, admit the probabilities of success and failure. Assess the opportunity. Ask yourself if you have a real competitive advantage. Then, select a competitive strategy you can discuss with your sales team.
Each of these four competitive strategies is appropriate in a different situation.
Head on – Appropriate only if your competitive advantage is overwhelming.
End run – Try to redefine the rules of the competition, and the prospect’s vision.
Partial victory – If you can’t win the whole deal, try for a piece.
Waiting – Try to slow the buyer down. Microsoft did this when it launched Exchange, its product for work groups. It pre-announced the release and asked buyers not to purchase Lotus Notes until Exchange was available. Many buyers complied.
Negotiation
The first rule is to negotiate only with decision makers. Hang tough. Remember:
The buyer will try to squeeze you. Expect at least four such attempts, and be ready to withstand them.
Don’t give up anything unless you get something in return.
Be ready to take it away. Just as buyers may take the deal away and give it to another salesperson, so you must also be ready to take your offer away by walking out. This is tough when the salesperson has a quota to meet and is coming up short. Sales managers should know that salespeople cannot negotiate effectively under such circumstances, and should plan to accompany them to the negotiation.
Launching your Solution Selling Process
To get started, dedicate inviolable time to prospecting. Analyze your top prospects and draft a profile of their pain. Chart your milestones, the steps that measure progress with each prospect. Draft a worksheet that indicates which milestones you have achieved with each prospect. Push to get your three top prospects to the halfway point in milestone achievement. Schedule calls with other prospects to define their pain further and diagnose their problem.
Get a second opinion from your manager about your calls with powerful prospects. Withdraw proposals that have no response within 30 days. Develop reference stories and cases each month. Don’t use old ones. Keep your material fresh.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2022
Read this a few times last couple decades every time I start a new role. It’s been instrumental to my success for decades and will be instrumental to my success next decade on my current venture. And, less than 5 business books are worth reading having read around 500 in 20+ years..
September 25, 2014
Well this was never going to be the most stimulating read of the year for me but still... the concepts presented are useful but the book itself is basic, re-written and ripped-off from previous authors. Want the original classic? Check out Michael T Bosworth.
June 23, 2017
Having worked for many years in a couple of the companies mentioned as users of this sales methodology, I can now understand some of the reports that I was asked to fill out. I am a sales engineer for a software company. The account managers were following this sales methodology, and using some of the tools, but the sales training did not extend to the engineers who were also instrumental in these solution sales. I learned quite a bit. I had heard that RFP responses are not worthwhile without having helped write them. That appears to be well documented in this book, and explains why there is always a leaning to not filling them out. In practice, though, since the account manager tends to have limited time involved in RFP responses, they always had to be completed by us engineers anyway. Seems quite worthwhile to those involved in the sales process for complex sales. Tools look useful. The final two chapters are aimed at sales management using this process and is not as valuable if you aren’t in that role.
February 6, 2018
This book is a the real deal. The author approaches sales in a process vision, instead of seeing the activity as just a bunch of skill sets. I recommend The New Solution Selling to anyone involved in sales, both salesperson and sales managers. Also, I specially recommend this piece for anyone involved in consulting or SaaS markets, since the "solution" approach of the solution selling sales process fits really well into those contexts.
Things like the idea of vision re-engineering and the 9 block framework make this book a real masterpiece. Congratulation to Mr. Keith Eades.
Things like the idea of vision re-engineering and the 9 block framework make this book a real masterpiece. Congratulation to Mr. Keith Eades.
November 11, 2020
This amazing book teaches you how to sell value and wisely use the most effective techniques. In my personal opinion a lot of managers and sales people could learn from this book a lot of real practices and after many years of “professional experience” change their mind to what really works in sales environment.
March 15, 2020
This is a book trying to provide selling guide based on crossing the chasm. In terms of sales method, it's bad. And I don't see how it is related to crossing the chasm, so just ignore this part.
The methods in it are not completely useless, but not worth reading.
The methods in it are not completely useless, but not worth reading.
June 23, 2018
Pretty good blocking and tackling for Solution Sales
September 29, 2020
Good book if you have not read many sales books. Largly a reinterpretation of existing material.
Read
October 25, 2024At the current rate of change a person could update there sales process every quarter and struggle to keep up. This book has foundational knowledge and new ideas. I look forward to the next edition.
November 8, 2025
An excellent book for anyone who works in sales and would like to have an organized approach to work.
The author lays out a system to follow whenever one is selling services or "solutions". Even if one has a product, it has to be pitched as a solution.
The book is a framework that turns chaotic pitches into controlled and managed deals: it's about facilitating discovery and a strong departure from "tell me about your services" to "show me how you'd solve our pain."
The author lays out a system to follow whenever one is selling services or "solutions". Even if one has a product, it has to be pitched as a solution.
The book is a framework that turns chaotic pitches into controlled and managed deals: it's about facilitating discovery and a strong departure from "tell me about your services" to "show me how you'd solve our pain."
August 21, 2023
I understand why this is required reading for many sales teams. This book takes you through the sales process and a number of different scenarios to help you understand what the selling/buying process happy and unhappy paths look like. I will for sure hold onto this book for future reference
October 24, 2011
This book was a selection of our company sales book club and it was a very worthwhile read. For anyone in sales who is moving from simple transactional sales into a more complex role, this book offers a great primer. We are a software systems integrator and the processes outlined in this book match our sales process very closely. Solution selling is all about finding the customer's pain and then digging to discover their requirements. This book provides a structured and easy-to-follow process for pain identification and needs discovery. It also offers many other ideas on account strategy and planning. Overall, a very worthwhile read. It is a very practical book. You will walk away with an action plan for better solution selling right away.
April 1, 2007
if you want to learn about the science of selling, this is the book for you. Gives a great overview of selling strategy, organization and customer relationships. Can be a little dense and if you're not working directly in sales difficult to apply, but all in all a great overview of an excellent sales techniques.
May 5, 2008
A great update to the career-changing Solution Selling book. I have no idea why Mike Bosworth is not on this update, but SPI Sales and Keith Eades are the two greatest things to happen to sales since Mike Bosworth. It may be a little dense at times. I would recommend reading The Solution Selling Fieldbook first, though, in order to learn real application of the concepts.
June 28, 2013
Skips some basics of sales that comes before this level of sophistication, so novices would be advised to also either get advice from someone experienced in order to adapt the process to their business (or do some practice exercises in such a way as to test your understanding in a way that will not negatively impact your business) ... but a must read either way :-)
July 10, 2009
Reading for work!
July 6, 2013
What I like most is the tools for solution selling included in this case book. They are useful.
December 20, 2014
Good book about sales process.
Lots of mesurable itens to help predict the sales outcome.
I did like how he encourages the NO and working with RFP/RFI
Lots of mesurable itens to help predict the sales outcome.
I did like how he encourages the NO and working with RFP/RFI
Read
June 19, 2015Location: PTI IRC
Accession No: DL027210
Accession No: DL027210
August 4, 2016
Essential reading for any Sales Engineer.
March 16, 2014
Important for anyone in relationship sales.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews