The Future Of Selling -- Consultative, Solutions and Customer Focused? Deja Vu All Over Again?

I'm frustrated and a little impatient. As a profession, we seem to be doing the same thing over and over, making little progress. Sometimes, I feel like I'm Bill Murray waking up every morning in "Ground Hog Day."

All sorts of sales consultants, guru's, and other self proclaimed experts (probably including me, if I'm honest) make a lot about being consultative, solutions and customer focused, value driven and even provocative in selling. These topics have been fodder for 100's of books, 1000's of articles and $ billions in sales training and other services.

Virtually every self respecting sales professional talks about being solutions, consultative, customer focused, or even provocative.

Buyers are saying the same thing, they want sales people to focus on their (the buyer's) business and problems, presenting business justified solutions.

I'm convinced --- and I think the leading thinkers and practitioners in selling are also convinced that this customer and value creation focus is critical for success in sales.

So why am I frustrated? This afternoon, I blew the dust off a well worn book on my bookshelf: Consultative Selling, 4th Edition, by Mack Hanan, published in 1990. The description on the fly leaf:

"What does a customer want more than anything else? Profits. If you, as a salesperson can shoe your customers how your product or service will improve their profits....you can be sure they will keep coming back for more...."

" This new approach comes directly from market demands, 'Customers in major markets are setting the new ground rules for selling.'"

"Would you like your customer to value you as a friend who can help make their business grow?"

That was in the 1990 edition, I'm sure similar thoughts were expressed in the original 1970 edition. Yet those are the same words we talk about, today, as the "new selling."

My copy of Miller Heiman's Strategic Selling was published in 1987, my copy of Bosworth's Solution Selling was published in 1995, Peter Drucker lectured on these concepts in the 1950-60's. I could go on citing book after book.

So I'm frustrated, why can't we make progress? For decades, we have been talking about this, but we seem to make little progress in execution. Why are our customers letting us get away with the same old thing?

When will we stop talking about solution selling, customer focused selling, and value based selling because it's the norm of practice by sales professionals? When will we move on to talk about the next thing---what is the next thing?

I don't have any answers and would love to get your thoughts. What's holding us back? How do we move on and look at the next new things we should be doing as sales professionals?

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