Mastering Solutions Selling: Expert Strategies for Success

All right. Hello to all my hub heroes. I'm your boy, George B. Thomas. And today on this episode of the Sidekick Strategies, we're talking about solutions, selling, what it is and how to do it right. All the things that you need to know. I can't wait to dive into the foundational principles, the customer centric approach, the building relationships, and really, what I'm saying is the brain of the expert that we have here today. That's right. Today I'm here with Christopher Barnett from Workflow and Hub Heroes. If you don't know, Christopher is a leader in the HubSpot ecosystem and is passionate about fostering excellence and achievement within the HubSpot community. He's a HubSpot community champion, Houston Hug Leader, HubSpot Certified Trainer, and founder of Workflow. Christopher consistently provides superior service and expertise to clients in revenue operations, HubSpot configuration, and sales empowerment. And I believe probably so much, much more. But we can't list everything. When stepping away from professional realm, Christopher enjoys playing soccer. Nice. Cooking up culinary delights. You got me there. Tending to the garden and spending cherished time with family, especially playing with his daughters and wife. And of course, we can't forget, ladies and gentlemen, dropping knowledge bombs on podcast interviews just like this one. Christopher, how the heck are you today?

I'm great. That was by far the best intro that I've ever had before. So doing better now. So, yeah, very excited to be here. I'm a big fan of this podcast. I typically end my day while going on a run and listening to the Hub Heroes podcast. So I'm always, always excited to hear the new content coming out.

Nice. Love it. Thank you. Appreciate the kind words. Okay, Hub Heroes, you know what time it is? Let's get into the good stuff. We're going to kind of introduce this idea of solution selling. So, Christopher, let's just start at the very beginning level set for everybody that's watching or listening to the show today. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of when we say the words solution selling for the rest of this interview, what it is, and its significance in today's business landscape?

Yeah, I like to think of solution selling as solving for the customer and going beyond, meaning that you're taking into account the pain points that they're experiencing now, which brought that conversation to you initially, as well as thinking about kind of the whole enchilada.

Right.

And so I'm a big believer in designing for the end state, meaning that when you're focusing on how you can pose your value proposition as A solution to that lead's pain points. It's not just about addressing the pain points now. It's thinking about how can my solution help that company scale or help that person scale their business by going beyond just those pain points, because obviously we want to solve for those. But the pain points are going to not just, you know, mitigate, but evolve over time as that business gets more complex or grows. And so your solution should be there for the long haul, not just for that short term.

I love this long haul idea versus short term. And I know there's going to be people that watch this on the interwebs or listen to a podcast and they're like, well, why should I change from what I'm doing now? And so I have to ask the question, why do you think this approach, solution selling, is better or a better choice for organizations moving forward than what they might currently be doing?

I think it boils down to scalability really is the main thing. So if you want to scale your business in a way that is, you know, measurable and maintainable overall, you really need to think about how do you design for that end state and work backwards from there. So when you're thinking about either a young business or a very established business, typically you have these annual or quarterly reviews addressing the goals and milestones that you want to hit over a certain timeframe in the future. Solutions based selling is very similar to that where your solution should factor in those goals and those milestones into their roadmap so that you can be part of that solution to ensure that scalability. And so if you're, you know, thinking about your pain points now and how you can solve those, like for the time being, you want to ensure that it's not just going to put out the fire and then another fire pops up. You want to make sure that your solution is able to take care of everything, you know, in, in perpetuity.

Love that so much. Okay, so again, paying attention to the audience, somebody stumbles into this podcast or video and they're like, hey, this solution selling sounds amazing. What advice would you give to someone who is just starting in this solution selling strategy or plan moving forward?

Yeah, I would really focus on building a relationship when you're selling something to someone, because there's, I mean, I'll throw a data point here at you. It's 60% of buyers distrust the integrity of salespeople. It's just no one likes being sold to. It's just kind of the nature that we live in nowadays. You can think like car Dealerships and places like that, unfortunately, where, you know, there's an infinite infamy associated to sales, unfortunately. And so the first step when you're focusing on solution selling is building a relationship with that person and genuinely caring about their, you know, value props and their pain points within their business. And so if you can act as a trusted partner and advisor and, you know, educate them on why your solution is the right fit, that will ultimately go way farther in the sales cycle in the lifetime of your engagement.

Christopher, I love that you threw out some stats there. That 60%, and let's be honest, probably 30% of the 40% just didn't take the survey. So that's why it was the 60%. I'm just joking, ladies and gentlemen. We do love salespeople if they're good. Right. And if they're doing what they should. Which is why, Christopher, I want to dive into what I might call some of the foundational principles of the topic that we're talking about today. So what are the core principles or philosophies that kind of underpin this solution selling that organizations really need to focus in on as they move forward?

Yeah, I would say the. The main one that I focus on as someone who, you know, preaches solution selling is build a relationship. That is the most important aspect of solution selling, in my opinion. Number two is think about the entire journey. And so it's a matter of, you know, not solving for the pain points now. Not like patching the hole in the boat and waiting for another one to pop up. It's how can we sail to the North Star with that solution? I would say number three is don't design around use cases, meaning that you need to factor in the pain points. Are they, you know, platform related? Are they process related? Are they people related? Right. We don't want to design for a bunch of use cases, you know, then that is what the lead pain point is. If it's a process problem, address that. Right. Don't design your solution about just putting out those quick fires. It's a matter of relationship journey. And define for the end state. Right. Make sure that there's no, you know, use cases that you're factoring in that are going to stop you from growing.

That might be the first rewind point of the episode where go back re listen to that or rewatch that and have your notepad ready. Now, one thing I have to make sure we hit because again, the foundational pieces, when things are named a certain way, certain people think a certain way. So for instance, we're talking about solution selling. Christopher, my question for you is what departments should focus on these items? Like, is it truly just a sales team only sport? Where does your mind go with that?

The best question ever. So I'll give you an example, right? In the world of like B2B software, right? Going back to infamy in the sales cycle, right? There is a common scenario that happens where your support that you get pre sale is amazing. You can contact a sales rep with an eight seconds, right? You can text your sales rep or respond right away, anything that they can do to offer the support, right? Then when you finally close your deal and you want that same level of support after that deal has been closed, it's not the same. It's a night and day difference, which is not good for that customer. So if you're focusing on customer experience and solution selling, that solution applies for the entire life cycle of the customer, not just pre sale. Because ultimately, if you're selling your solution, you're selling that you're a value trusted partner, that support needs to be a constant all the way through that customer. Because ultimately we don't want customers. We want evangelists inside of our. Inside of our CRM.

Ooh, are you closing customers or evoking evangelists for your organization? There's something to think about there. And here's the thing. I don't know if the traditional sales philosophy or methods actually do that latter thing for us. And I know we kind of teased into it at the beginning, but I want to ask this question and allow you to go a little bit deeper. Maybe even put on some boxing gloves if you feel the need. But when I asked the question, how does solution selling differ from traditional sales methods? Christopher, where does your mind go? What would you want people to pick up and be able to understand?

Yeah, I would say keeping the customer at the center of the experience is, I think, the difference. Because in a traditional sales model, if you will, it's really just, you know, you're getting the customer to, you know, have that final touchpoint, final conversion, whatever it is, signing a contract, paying an invoice, then the sales rep is great onto the next one. I don't care, right? Because my job is done. Solution selling, if you think about this from like a true rev ops mindset, it's about marketing. Sales and service should be more connected nowadays than ever before, right? If you're still working in siloed departments in your organization, that's a serious problem, right? Rev ops ing your business by connecting those together is part of the pillars of solution selling. Because we want to make sure that tone and messaging and experience from pre sale to mid sale to post sale to that evangelism stage as well, is all constant and wonderful for that customer. Because that's how you create that evangelist level of success.

So good. And it's funny because you mentioned this term customer centric approach and I really think for some people that might be like mind shift that has to happen inside of organizations. So Christopher, can you explain how solution sellings allows us to focus on customer needs and pain points and maybe walk us through like when that's happening in your daily process of solution selling? Like what are you thinking of? What are you doing? Like that type of thing?

Yeah. So there's a couple of key things that I focus on whenever I am, you know, doing my initial discovery, whenever we are focusing on a solution and selling that solution. So number one is you need to know what is valuable and meaningful to that customer. That's kind of the main thing. So understanding and having that same language and that agreed upon value and of what's meaningful to them is very, very important from the get go. From there you need to get to know that customer's business very intimately. Right. The more granular and the deeper you can understand their use case, the better your solution can be tailored to fit that model. Number three is collaborate with the customer to identify those problems and agree upon the solution that fits those customers problems and goals and think about beyond those in that end state as well. And so once you have that agreement between both, you're doing a couple of things. You're improving your relationship by taking their contextual knowledge into account, never building that solution. In addition, they see you as a trusted partner because they're thinking about wow, this person is really getting to know my business intimately. They have a solution for what my pain points are and they're thinking about how they can help me beyond when those pain points are solved because they have my best interest in mind. And then from there it's really simple. Once you agree and get acknowledgement of the value that you can deliver, there's no selling. At that point you're done selling because you've agreed upon the value between those two types of pain points and and customer solution. And from there it's evangelism. That's the beginning of that evangelist journey. From there, once you've agreed and gotten the acknowledgment that your solution can solve for their problems and goals and beyond.

I like this idea of there's no More selling. And the word that popped into my mind, you used evangelism. But I was like, oh, at this point you can serve like you can be a servant to what they actually need. And Christopher, I love that you mentioned this idea of understanding their needs and goals. And I want to get a little tactical, if you will, for a hot minute. Christopher, when you think of that, like, what strategies do you recommend for effectively identifying and then understanding those unique needs or goals of the customer that you're trying to now serve instead of sell.

You kind of have to work with the pain points and the goals in tandem because typically they're related. So what I see in my experience is like you're talking about the tactical side is it's much easier for someone to define their pain points than it is for someone to define their goals. Because the pain points typically affect them at a day to day or more frequent basis than when they think about where they want to get to. Because they view the pain points as a blocker towards the goals. It's getting to know their business intimately. Kind of like what I said before, which is when you understand the pain points, you understand these pain points are blockers towards a larger North Star goal that this person is trying to get to. So let's dive into that. Let's see how you know if these pain points are really preventing you from growing. We know that solving these is very valuable. And so let's dive into the business to see what is the impact of my solution towards these pain points and how does that guide you towards that North Star. So it's a little bit of digging in discovery in the form of really having a granular understanding of those pain points and what blockers and what roadblocks are coming from those and how that's affecting the progress towards getting to that North Star goal.

It's interesting because as I'm listening to you answer the last couple of questions, I start to hear like, conversations and listening and spending time. And Christopher, dare I say it sounds like we're almost starting to like build relationships with these humans that have hurdles or aspirations. It's kind of crazy to think of it that way. So let's dive into that. Like, how important is relationship building in solution selling, and what are some key tactics for fostering strong customer relationships where now it's almost like they're not customers, they're just friends that you meet, help, and tend to send you money.

It's the most important because, you know, I was talking to one of my wife's friends last night about this. She said, you know, my fiance wants to go and work in sales. And she's like, but I don't want him to work in sales. And I said, well, why? It's like, because sales people are slimy. And she went on this big rant about how I hate sales reps basically. And I'm like, yeah, because sales reps just have this negative connotation kind of going into. That's why, you know, you see in the world of B2B SaaS, like your title doesn't have the word sales in it. It has you're an account executive or something like that. And so it's more customer centric language because you have to get over that initial barrier of being, you know, someone who's trying to sell you. Right. There's automatic friction that's kind of embedded in that relationship from the get go. And so the more you focus on the relationship, the better the experience is going to be for both of you, not just the customer, but for me as well. Right. Because if I can provide value and I can build a relationship and then be candid and transparent enough to say, hey, like, you know, I'm not ready to buy at this point in time and I'm being told that as a sales rep. Great, thank you for telling me. That was like, let's, you know, Keep Touch on LinkedIn and I'm going to go on to my next opportunity that way. You're not going to get to this end state of spending three weeks building out proposals and ultimately getting a no. In the long run you have a much, you know, smoother sales cycle for both parties in that situation because you have a relationship that's built upon trust and credibility.

Trust and credibility. And that's where you're trying to get to. I think that's like part of. And we'll probably talk about what success looks like, but I feel like that's a, a section or a piece or a wing, if you will, of the building to success with solution selling. So let's again dive a little bit more into tactical because I'm super curious, Christopher, your approach on this and especially into this micro idea of like tailoring it for their needs. So I'll just ask the question, what is your approach to tailoring solutions to fit specific customer scenarios that you bump into? Like, how do you do that?

I'll give you a great example for all the HubSpot Solutions partners listening. Right? So solutions partners pay attention to this Whenever we do discovery calls with companies that are interested in buying HubSpot we like to think of this as going back to the, you know, purchasing a car scenario. Whenever you are interested in buying a car, you kind of have a rough idea of what you want in terms of do I want an electric vehicle, you know, a three row car, whatever it is. Right. But ultimately your decision comes from test driving the vehicle. Right? You always want to test drive it first. We believe in the same methodology for when we are demoing HubSpot for businesses that are net new to the world of HubSpot CRM. And so what we do is after our discovery, we will open up a demo account for that user, a trial account for that user, and make those like configurations to show them. This is how your pain points will be solved. Here's how we can go beyond get more strategic and ultimately help your organization through the power of an integrated CRM. And so this is where you show the value, right? It's a service offering that's free in that demo process, in that biz dev process that ultimately shows that you are a trusted partner because you're dumping the time into making that special for that user by thinking about their use case and using your resources and your team members to show this is exactly how we would solve it. Check it out.

Some good tips in there. All right, let's actually keep diving into these kind of good tips because again, let's go back to the fact that somebody might just be starting this is something new to them. Hey, yeah, I'm gonna do solution selling. You've been doing it for a while. You've probably bumped into some challenges along the way of like, oh, didn't see that one coming. Like, so what are some of the common challenges faced in solution sellings? And, and how can the viewers or listeners pay attention to those and then maybe be able to overcome those?

I would say, I imagine those that heard my last spiel on opening the demo account are thinking, well, I can't do that for every customer. It's not scalable. It's too much time to dump into, into that biz dev process. Right. And the common question that I get when we have these conversations is how much time is too much biz dev time in solution selling? And I think that really depends upon what you're selling and the value of it as well. And so from my perspective, we don't cap the hours in terms of the amount of biz dev time spent for a deal unless it starts to get ridiculous where we know we're being led on. Obviously, the biz dev time we view as an investment because it's not just investing in the purchase, but the value of the partnership in terms of, okay, this company or this person now views me and my company as a trusted partner for the long term. Meaning that investment gets calculated back into the business in terms of that long term revenue. So it's, yeah, now we're going to be a trusted partner with you for the next five years and we're going to help you with all of your revenue operation strategies, with all of your CRM implementation and configuration and overall just have you at the heart of our business with everything that we do. And so this is where you're investing, you know, that biz dev time into the relationship, not so much into the sale.

It's interesting, Christopher, my brain is going in two different directions right now with this next question. One you mentioned demo account and kind of reference like what I'll say is a little bit of technology here, technology there. Hey. And even some more technology over here. And then as we're sitting here you know, having this conversation, shoot. You know, GPTs just got released in chat GPT and AI is all the rage. So I don't know which direction you want to go in or if you want to go in both directions. But I have to at least ask the question because inquiring minds are going to want to know how has technology influenced or transformed solution selling in the recent years?

Yeah, it's a great question. I think that technology specifically in the form of AI is going to do nothing but help sales reps be more effective in their day to day job role. And so I think about the power of HubSpot's AI tools. Right. So Chat Spot and just the native AI tools that exist in the CRM as of now. So the Content assistant is a great example. I'm gonna give another tactic on how I use HubSpot's AI tools in my demo process. So let's say that we have a lead who is interested in purchasing marketing Hub and they say I don't have bandwidth for a blog. Right. It's just, it's too much time for my team to dump into it. I just, I don't know what topics to use, et cetera. What I do in my demo process is let's use HubSpot's content assistant and let's write a blog right now together and I will email it to you after this demo. Meaning that I can show you the power of the Content Assistant in real time and give you an actual usable blog post for you in this Demo process. Right. And so I think that things like that in the world of AI, in the world of just advanced technology, are going to help sales reps be able to pull levers to show the solutions to a more advanced degree that is keeping that business's use case in mind at the center of that strategy. So being really, really personalized and really, really tailored to those pain points, values and goals.

Nice. Like that. I like how it's like just part of even the demo and process and that AI piece and, and two, just the, the fact of the AI tools that are in HubSpot, like focusing in on that and not just the broader everything AI topic was beautiful. Let's do this. There's people who are like, yep, I'm sold. Solution selling, let's do it. But they're wondering in the back of their head like, do I got the chops for this? The answer, by the way, is probably yes. But Christopher, what skills are essential for someone looking to excel in solution sellings and how can they develop them over time if they feel like some are stronger or some are weaker?

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that there's a couple of things that come to mind in the form of skills. So I think listening is a big one. And so really, you know, talking about that second bullet point that I mentioned in that initial discovery is getting to know that customers or that leads business very intimately, meaning listening to those pain points and understanding at a really good granular level, how does that affect that person's day to day, what are those roadblocks for the business, etc. So listening is a huge one. I would say vulnerability is another big one as well because when we think about, you know, that stat of 60% of people distrust the integrity of sales reps. You know, you have to be vulnerable enough to understand that I am kind of at an automatic disposition in this, you know, sales process, if you will. And so I really need to focus on being as vulnerable as possible with this lead in order for them to trust me and my solution that I am bringing to them to help develop that. I mean, I would encourage you to just practice this in your day to day life. Focus on listening and genuinely absorb the content of what someone's telling you. If someone is talking about a bad day and, or someone's talking about the pain points that they have, sympathize and empathize with those pain points and get to know those pain points intimately and be able to offer a solution for those because that's how you build that trusted partnership.

Love it so much. And I'm about to dive into kind of the measuring success and the future of solution selling. But before I do, if you're listening to this on podcast or you're watching this on YouTube and you want to get more resources, you need more of a sidekick because you're the hero in your organization. Make sure you head over to Hub Heroes community. We're there to help you. All right, let's get into the good stuff again. Measuring Success and the future. Christopher, how do you measure success in solution selling and what do you think the important metrics are or the most important metrics that you should be paying attention to?

Yeah, I think there's a couple. And this is where your question previously about what teams focus on solution selling, this is really an interesting segue, is one of the important metrics that we measure with solution selling is what is our customer retention rate and within that retention rate, how many of those are upselling within our service agreement? Meaning they're using us for not just the first service line or product that we agreed upon, but more than one. How many are using us for literally everything in their business? Because we are the trusted partner for them, we're able to offer a full stack solution or full suite solution for this customer. So main KPIs retention, how engaged is this customer with you now? How long has this customer been with you know, all the core metrics that make sense as well, right? Your basic close rate, you know, things like that. But mainly it's how many of your customers are evangelists, is the overarching, you know, KPI that you want to measure? How many of those are reviewing you in your directory profiles? How many of those are sending you referrals because they love working with you so much they want to share it with their other colleagues and friends? What I would also recommend is measure your LinkedIn engagement from your actual customers. That's a big one because if you have that valued partnership, we love interacting with our customers, LinkedIn posts and their LinkedIn profiles. And so being able to support their content and have that being a mutual journey for the both of us makes all the difference because we have each other's best interest in mind.

So good. And again, second rewind point. People should go back and listen to that section again. And Christopher, it's interesting because I was literally in my brain as you're talking, envisioning, imagine just reaching out to your entire database and asking them, would you consider yourself an evangelist of who we are and what we do? Yes, Maybe or no. And then being able to do something based on them selecting one of those options, man, it would be really interesting to know Our database is 30% or 90% considering themselves evangelists of impact to your business. Anyway, let's move on because I want to know, like there's many people out there. The show me state the proof is in the pudding. There's a whole bunch of like, you know, sayings that we could throw out there for this. Show me the success. So Christopher, can you share an example or a case study of sorts where solution selling significantly impacted a business or the process of selling in that business?

I'll give you a great example. And I think I wore my super pullover for this exact use case. So inbound 2023, right? We saw each other there. The. The best inbound that I've ever been to. I think by far probably the biggest that I've ever been to as well.

It was good.

We were part of the SuperD 10K pitch competition. We were one of five finalists. I was thinking, how can I build a presentation that is going to blow the minds of those in the audience and how can I really show value to those that are attending as well as those that will watch this after the inbound is over? And so I was working with one of my colleagues internally, shout out to Ryan Quinn for developing that. As the engineer, we dove into the real estate use case with super meaning how can we use HubSpot to solve for a specific industry vertical that is really, really hard for HubSpot to dive into. We chose real estate. This was countless hours of pain point analysis focusing on goals and values and how can we design an account that ultimately is the one point solution for all possible firms in the United States. And so with that, I called a customer on stage in front of, I think it was hundreds of people in the audience at that point and deployed a live enterprise hub, a full suite solution that integrated the mls, right? Sales pipelines, super cards, automatic, you know, workflows, emails, Google Map, link creation, leveraging every single Hub in the HubSpot product suite for a customer live on stage. From there. I'll give you a capitalization on that example. We are now, you know, doing demos of this specific journey multiple times per week because we have designed this to be absolutely perfect for a solution for firms across the domestic US and so that is one where we've seen a crazy amount of activity on it because it is so tailored towards the pain points and the goals of the, of the firms out there in the us. And so the proof is in the pudding in the sense of if you do it the right way, you don't have to go and hunt for the leads that want it, they come to you.

I love that you don't have to go hunting because you're just the magnet of what you're doing is pulling them in. That is so good. All right, so one of the questions that I've been excited this entire time to ask you, and it's kind of looking into the future and I love to get people's brains to kind of like, here's what I think could possibly happen. So I'll just ask the question, what future trends do you foresee in and around this topic that we've been talking about today, that is solution sellings. What does your crystal ball or what does the future look like?

The future of solution selling and the trends that we can expect to see are going to be more related to the velocity of the product updates that are coming out with the, the HubSpot product roadmap. And so I think that there is a lot of things happening in the community right now. I see a lot of stuff on LinkedIn of people talking about I can't keep up to date with HubSpot product updates. And I'm kind of thinking to myself, like, HubSpot is the only, you know, full stack CRM that actually listens to its customers and designs the product roadmap with their best interest in mind. And that is a fantastic thing because the alternative is much worse. You know, they don't have to listen to the customers if they don't want to and they can build a product roadmap as is. I think if anything, solution selling is going to be more aligned with how can we take the limitations of a platform that we're seeing and submit that feedback and have HubSpot build a product roadmap to meet those more niche use cases over time? I think that it's not going to be a matter of we're going to always configure this out of the box CRM to meet the use case. I think that the use case will actually be more fit to be tailored to the CRM, if you will. And so it's going to kind of be the reverse of that journey. And so there's a lot of other things in there in the form of like AI tools and things like that that will help with the, the solution selling process. But I think that it's going to be more about the use case fitting the CRM and Not the CRM fitting the use case.

Love it so much. Okay, so now you didn't know this one was coming, but I have one last question before we let people get back to their regularly scheduled day. If we take this topic, solution sellings, that we've been talking about for about 30 minutes now, what's the one thing, the one thing that you hope people take away from today's episode?

Relationship building is the main thing. You have to focus on building relationships in the sales process. And so this is where it makes all of the difference. And again, I will echo the data point of the distrust of people and sales types of roles. You're automatically at that disposition. So if you could focus on that relationship building and genuinely care about the interests and pain points, that will have the most immediate impact on on your selling technique with posing your value as a solution, that by far is the most immediately impactful and the highest value from this episode.

Very cool. Christopher. First of all, thank you for taking time to do this episode. We really do appreciate it. If people do have questions for you, where the heck do you want to point them?

Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. I talk about solution selling a lot also, you know, follow us in the HubSpot community, visit our website. We've got tons of resources out there on solution selling and so happy to have chats just like this and appreciate you having me on the on the podcast today.

Of course. And we might have to have you back again in the near future. Hub Heroes, if you're listening this on the podcast, make sure you head over to the community. If you're watching this on YouTube, hit that like or subscribe. But also you might want to head over to the community there too. There's a lot of other content we're putting in there. Listen, Christopher said it in this episode, keeping up with HubSpot.

Whoo.

It's becoming a thing and we're doing what we can to help with that. Until next time, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and we'll see you on the next episode of Sidekick Strategies real soon.