Just Said It

I was in a meeting yesterday with a business partner. He's a smart guy and a great salesperson. He has a problem though. He has been running a company selling products for years, but now his products have hit the commodity cycle and he has to change.

He has become convinced he has to sell more services and move to solution sales. He is planning a lot of training to convert his current large sales force to a solution based sales force, and we were talking about the challenges of that.

Here is my advice on this subject from living through it in more than one industries.

1. Accept the fact that best product sales person will not be your best solution sales person. The process and the required skills are too different.

2. Training is an absolute requirement, but not an absolute solution.

3. Before you judge which sales person can make the change figure out first which ones are really willing to make the change. (I think it's more like converting a hockey player to a baseball player than it is like moving a shortstop to second base.)

4. You have to change your success metrics first. If you keep asking how many boxes or licenses they sold then it will be impossible to move forward.

This is an important subject. Let me know what you think and what advice you would have given?

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