Useful Advices - Business

The mantra of selling solutions has taken enterprise software by storm and nowhere is this more prevalent than CRM. Honestly, it seems like the more challenging and difficult it is to sell into specific sectors of CRM, the more solution selling is being invoked

According to USFDA, a combination product is one composed of any combination of a drug and device; biological product and device; drug and biological product

. All this newfound religion of selling solutions is truly transforming some companies away from being purely product-centric to being problem-centered on their customers’ broken business processes first. The most positive aspect of solution selling pervading

; or drug, device, and biological product and fixed dose combination would include two or more combinations of drug.

Examples of combination products may in

he best-of-breed CRM community is that it is starting to make a difference.

These best of breed vendors who are walking the solutions talk also have generated a side benefit no one is really talking about when it comes to solutions selling, and that benefit is

lude drug-coated devices, drugs packaged with delivery devices in medical kits, and drugs and devices packaged separately but intended to be used together.

integrity. Amazing as it sounds I don’t think enough companies really stop and think about the long-term implications to their integrity of giving themselves the label of being a “solutions seller” without earning it. In fact it’s just as easy for a company to

here is enormous increase in the number of combination products entering the market in the recent years. Combination products have proven advantages but fixe

claim they are “customer focused” as being enlightened at solution selling without being either.

What’s unsettling and troublesome is that so many CRM vendors, in trouble with thinning pipelines on the one hand and competitors from the SaaS world nipping at the

d dose combinations are still in the process of convincing regulatory authority on their advantages over the single ingredient formulations.

Combination pro

r heels including Salesforce.com at the low-end and mid-range of the market on the other, jump to solutions selling without thinking about how to build integrity in the process. The bottom line is that solution selling for the troubled CRM vendors of today is j

ucts have become life saving products for the pharmaceutical companies who doesn’t have many innovative molecules in their product pipeline and have been inc

ust like the “Hail Mary” long pass in football often thrown in the last seconds of a half or game, hoping someone on their team will come down with a signed deal in the end zone. One of the many problems with seeing solution selling as the “quick fix” to major p

easingly used in the product life cycle management. Even the companies having product patents are trying to extend their product life cycle through the combi

oblems is that it comes across just like that to prospects and clients alike. The proof comes in the execution, not in landing the deal.

The companies getting the best results from solution selling are doing these tasks not just to get them done, but with a lo

nation products and maximize the revenues. But the companies involved in this practice are overlooking that they are burdening the patients both economically

t of focus and effort behind them to make their solutions trustworthy, and at the heart of solution selling with integrity is the earning of trust:

• Populate roadmaps with products you can WebEx today showing integration. A sure sign a company is solution sell

and physically. They need to rightly judge the benefits of the combination products and they have to even look at the risks involved when combining the produ

ng with integrity is when they have reality-based roadmaps. Every application, whether licensed or hosted, can he demonstrated on WebEx and the systems integrated with can also be seen anywhere on the planet, anytime, through a simple WebEx window. That’s impr

ts. Some of the combination products were well accepted by physicians while others suffered. Companies involved in development of combination products are fi

ssive, it’s solution selling and it’s making many companies practicing this worthy of trust. Finally, prospects say to themselves, a vendor who “gets it” and shows me what is shipping. Not to belabor the point, but you have to respect Steve Job’s quote “Real a

ding difficulty in defining their combination products and facing various challenges from selecting a combination to marketing it.

Following aspects would a

rtists ship”, reminding his staff that delivering working products on time is as important as innovation and killer designs.

• Solution selling is not an excuse to jack up services fees to 10X or higher of license costs. There are those software companies tha

dd to the challenges in developing combination products:

Which markets to tap where the combination products can do fairly well?
Which combination prod

will announce solutions selling as their core focus with much fanfare only to surprise prospects and clients both with a revamped pricing model that takes services costs through the roof. Instead of focusing on selling more services with a solution selling lab

cts are meaningful and rational?
Which therapeutic categories to select?
Which Combinations can address unmet needs of the patients?
Do combin

el on it, try to deliver more services at the same license-to-services ratio, earning trust in the process. The bottom line is that by doing this you will be way ahead of competitors who will look to solution selling as a strategy to drive up deal sizes.

• Mod

tions increase the patient compliance?
What would be the developing cost?
How to tackle the risks encountered during combination product developmen

fy Sales’ comp plans to reflect selling solutions long-term over just flipping deals. This is by far the toughest step for many companies to take because it directly impacts revenue in the short-term, but its necessary to give sales reps the chance to go deep i

t?

As combination products don't fit into the traditional categories of drugs, medical devices, or biological products, the USFDA is in the process of devel

to accounts and look for problems to solve rather than just the next license sale needed. Revising comp plans to reward the annuity stream of revenue from a solution also solves a major sales management issue, which is turnover.

• Quit dating your customers an

ping new procedures for reviewing their safety, efficacy and quality.

Professional from academic institutions, pharmaceutical industries, health care indust

d marry them. There’s a big difference here as one is transitory and the other is long-term (except in Nevada), one is focused on seeing what works with little investment and the other is a complete investment.

• Making a strategy contribution means more than

y and representatives from various regulatory agencies are working out to design the regulatory requirements for manufacture and sale of combination products

ust trimming costs. The best solutions sold end up as strategies that create value continually for clients. If there is a best practices thread in all this, it is this: solution selling that creates value are what it’s really all about. Sure, software gets so

.

As there is an increasing trend of the combination products companies manufacturing such products should be able to tackle the problems involved in the de

ld to just do sales force automation, service management, call center operations, and even cross-channel coordination. But none of these applications matter long-term in any company until they attain strategy status, and create value in the form of measured res

elopment. They need to be wiser in analyzing the market trends and the regulatory requirements.

Companies that provide selfless information through particip

lts.

Bottom line: Solution selling starts when you find a way to become critical to your customers’ roadmaps, strategies, plans and future. Look for those mile markets and populate your CRM system with them, and you’ll be truly selling solutions with integrity

tion in industry events and feedback to regulatory authorities would be able to face the challenges and will be successful in developing combination products

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The age old question, you want to start a business but have little capital available. So how do you do it?

How well do you know your prospect? When you write a sales letter not only do you have to know your product intimately, taste it, feel it, own it and use it but…you have to also know who you are sellling it to.

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