Expert Video

Steve Hurley interviews Nina Hargus, VP of Global Services at EMC Corporation on some of the difficulties in enabling the channel to sell solutions

Defining a "Solution"

"Solutions" is one of those slippery words that can mean anything and everything. In the context of B2B companies, however, the term has taken on a specific meaning.  A council of leading solutions marketing professionals, sponsored by ITSMA, developed the following definition:

"A solution is a combination of products, services, and intellectual property focused on a specific business problem that drives measurable business value."

While we like and agree with this definition, we believe that it's missing s few important elements, so here is our definition:

"A combination of products, services, and intellectual property focused on a specific business problem or opportunity that drives measurable business value and can be significantly standardized. The solutions components can be from either the vendor and one or more partners, and the solutions implementer can be the vendor, the partner, the customer itself, or a combination of the three."

It's a bit longer, and doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but we nevertheless have found that it clicks with both buyers and sellers given its emphasis on solving specific business problems with measurable business value.  Also, the value is determined by the amount of the solution that is delivered by each of the parties involved in creating the solution. Understood as such, the word "solution" can get beyond the hype and provide important direction to business strategy and operations.

Search our Website
Connect With Us

Solutions Marketing Success Model
Download Free Report

Solutions Marketing Blogs
Solutions Marketing LinkedIn Community

resources

   

 

 

Solutions Marketing Latest Insight

Entries in business strategy (1)

Tuesday, February 10, 2009 at 10:05 AM
10:05AM

You'll always struggle creating solutions, unless...

We’ve seen it time and time again. Sales execs e-mail their colleagues and report what their customers want. They pass on the concerns, interests and desperate requests – “if you had a securitization system that could do this, or a network optimization application that could give us this level of guarantee, or a CRM system that could provide information in this format, we’d buy in a heartbeat.”  The messages are heard loud and clear, there is flurry of interest and activity at HQ, and then….nothing.

Click to read more ...

AuthorSteve Hurley | Print ArticlePrint Article | CommentPost a Comment | |
tagged , , , , in