Afterword

Now that you’ve read all about Solution Selling and what it takes to increase sales and establish a high-performance sales culture, it’s all up to you to make this a reality in your personal life or organization. To do this well, you will need courage and resiliency, but the potential rewards are worth the investment.

I recently had lunch with the retired chairman of Bank of America, Hugh McColl, whom I consider one of the great visionaries and leaders in the financial service industry. Hugh recognized that the financial industry was changing and instead of ignoring change, as most others did, he embraced it and found opportunity. And as a result, he helped grow Bank of America’s business by more than fifty times to $610 billion in assets and more than 142,000 employees in twenty-one states. By embracing change, Bank of America has become one of the world’s great success stories.

To succeed in business and in life, you do have to take some risks. Embracing a sales process like Solution Selling or introducing it into your business carries some risk of failure, if you don’t sustain the changes the process requires. More than 500,000 sales professionals worldwide have overcome that risk, and are using Solution Selling every day. You have the opportunity now to make a real difference to yourself or organization by implementing Solution Selling, thus making a difference to your customers, to your business, and in your own life.

After embracing it personally or introducing the Solution Selling process into your organization, be prepared to encounter some resistance, and don’t be discouraged. If we allow naysayers to dominate, we’ll never do anything. The job of leadership is to articulate a vision that people can understand so they can follow. Be a leader by explaining the value of adopting the Solution Selling process. In fact, you can use Solution Selling to create that vision in the minds and hearts of your people.

I have a philosophy that I can achieve anything in life as long as I help others achieve what is important to them. I have also learned that if you want people to follow you, then you have to look after them, and you have to think about them. Helping your people with a proven process for serving customers and winning more business is a great way to demonstrate your commitment to their success.

In addition, by adopting Solution Selling, you are really giving your people a greater opportunity for victory, and for sharing that success with your organization. There’s nothing like winning to create a sense of optimism, to feel that any obstacle can be overcome.

The potential rewards of embracing the principles of Solution Selling have been described at great length in this book. But let me describe one additional benefit which may not be so obvious. By using a proven process to win more sales, you are providing increased value to your customers, which allow you to create more wealth, and as a result, enjoy more freedom for yourself, for your family, and for everyone in your organization.

In this book, I have described how to create and sustain a high-performance sales culture that keeps the customer in the center of attention. Nothing is more important to achieving success in today’s business environment. But, as I said before, the choice to make it happen is all up to you.

I wish you courage in your efforts to implement Solution Selling and optimism in realizing the freedom that comes from the success of you and your people.