Creative Solutioning

Elevating Customer Engagement and Winning Deals

Presales teams are pivotal in shaping the sales process and outcomes. Creative solutioning in presales isn’t merely about identifying and presenting products or services; it's crafting innovative solutions tailored to the customer's needs and challenges. This post explores the importance of creativity in presales, methods for fostering innovation, and the real-world impacts of adopting creative solutioning strategies.

Creative solutioning blends deep customer understanding, innovative thinking, tech chops and pragmatic product application.

Why Creative Solutioning Matters

1. Enhanced Customer Engagement: Presales teams can engage customers more deeply by proposing tailored solutions. This approach demonstrates a commitment to understanding and solving the customer’s problems, which builds trust and credibility.

2. Competitive Differentiation: In crowded markets, offering novel solutions to a customer’s issue can significantly differentiate a company from its competitors. This highlights the company's innovative capabilities and commitment to its customers.

3. Increased Conversion Rates: Creative solutions are often more compelling and can lead to higher conversion rates.

Strategies for Fostering Creativity

1. Customer Discovery: The #1 thing you need to do; period. If you don’t understand the customer, you will miss out (on building trust, credibility and deals!). You need to LISTEN + LEARN. A deep dive to understand the customer’s business model, market demands, executive motivations, goals, competitors, and challenges. This discovery exercise is focused on asking smart questions and listening to your customer(s). You want to draw out as much relevant information through conversation and storytelling with the client. Look beyond what they are telling you and you may discover more opportunities and problems to solve. This invaluable information gives you the necessary details to deliver the best solution possible.

2. Cross-functional Collaboration: Encourage collaboration between presales, sales, product, marketing, and technical teams. This collaboration leads to more comprehensive solutions. (part of this collaboration work includes situational awareness as well as drives optics and desirable outcomes)

3. Continuous Learning and Adaptation: Presales professionals should be encouraged to keep up with industry trends, technological advancements, and emerging business models. This ongoing learning helps in crafting relevant and forward-thinking solutions. Always be curious.

4. Leveraging Technology: Utilize tools and technologies to simulate or prototype solutions. Visualizing the solution can be a powerful way to demonstrate value to the customer.

5. Encouraging a Culture of Innovation: Technology adoption is rarely about the technology itself. It is about the people who are going to use it. What are their motivations, and how do they lead, manage and operate at work? Tap into these insights to see if the organization is set up to promote a culture that values discovery, experimentation, regularly delivering value to customers and innovation. There may be a greater opportunity and bigger deals!

The goal is to exceed customer expectations, strengthen customer relations and win more deals.

Don’t be mediocre - strive for extraordinary!

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

Adam