Salesforce Transformation to Solution Selling

A central part of a manufacturer’s transformation to solution selling involves recruiting and training salespersons who enact the critical relational processes of solution selling at the customer interface. Such solution selling involvement by the salespeople plays a key role in ensuring subsequent solution selling performance. However, given that the requirements for solution selling differ drastically from product selling, ensuring salesperson solution selling involvement is a challenging task in a transformation context. Given these difficulties, we suggest that the manufacturer undergoing a solution transformation can choose between two approaches. One alternative is to create a dedicated solution selling salesforce staffed with salespeople who possess the right set of motivations and abilities. The other is to implement a broader transformation program that facilitates the ability of the existing product-centric salesforce to engage in solution selling. It is likely that a dedicated solution salesforce staffed with suitable salespeople precedes a broader salesforce wide transformation.