Keith M. Eades - The New Solution Selling

Copyright 2004 by Solution Selling, Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-07-144233-6
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Dedicated to the 500,000 salespeople that utilize Solution Selling daily to improve their performance and contribute to their customers success. They bring reality to the words honorable selling.

To Margiethe love of my life, and to Michael, John, and David, the best sons a father could wish for.

To my dad for giving me my first sales job, and to my mother for her encouragement and belief that I could do anything.

Over the past few years, global economic pressure and competition have influenced the way customers across the world evaluate and adopt technology. Customers are seeking to reduce their ongoing operating costs to fund investments in new solutions targeted at specific opportunities in their businesses. In our engagement with partners and customers we recognize that solutions become relevant when they solve real business issues and help people and businesses become more efficient and agile.

The key to success is connection. And I believe very strongly in the importance of working to strengthen the interaction between Microsoft and our customers. It is through connection that we accomplish our goal of delivering solutions that provide customer value and satisfaction.

Our customers have asked for more predictability and consistency in their relationships with us. Towards this goal, we have established a consistent selling method for each and every one of us at Microsoft that enables us to act upon strengthening our connection and being more consistent with and predictable to our customers.

In our journey of working together, we have put the principles of Solution Selling at the core of our selling process, helping all of our 5,000 sales professionals and thousands of Microsofts business partners consistently apply proven sales principles to make a real difference to our customers and meet expectations.

Customer satisfaction is derived from exceeding expectations. Through the use of Solution Selling we can become more predictable to our customers in how we listen to their challenges and concerns, how we provide a vision of a solution, and how we deliver on that vision. It is my hope that by embracing the tenets of Solution Selling at the heart of our sales process, we will improve the value we deliver to customers.

This book is all about how to create and sustain a high-performance sales culture that maintains the customer as its central focus. The New Solution Selling describes how top-performing salespeople behave, and how this behavior fosters successfor both the customer and the seller. In this book, Keith Eades shows how our salespeople can become a key differentiator in the selection of Microsoft from all other alternatives in the market.

By adopting Solution Selling as our standard sales method, we can provide more value to our customers, while at the same time, improving our own effectiveness and efficiency. As you read The New Solution Selling, I would encourage you to apply these ideas for improving your own sales approach as well as for developing a high-performance sales culture within your organization to reach your mutual goal of customer value and satisfaction.

KEVIN JOHNSON,
Microsoft Group Vice President,
Worldwide Sales, Marketing, and Services

Solution Selling is the industry standard for sales execution process. Used by more than 500,000 sales professionals worldwide, Solution Selling provides the foundation of process and practices that can make eagles out of average sales performers.

Solution Selling has evolved to keep pace with the latest economic trends, business conditions, and the rapidly changing world of selling. In general, the pace of decision making in customers buying cycles has accelerated, driven by improved communications and global competition. Since the original Solution Selling book was first published, the world has seen the introduction of the Internet, the World Wide Web, advanced multichannel sales strategies, greatly improved telecommunications and computing productivity tools, and emerging international markets.