The Effect of Solution Transition on Steering the Sales Force: For New Marketing and Sales Metrics

Text Sample:
Chapter 3.5, Drivers for Solution Orientation:
Reason for the development towards solution orientation is not a single root cause but various circumstances of which the most obvious ones are illustrated in the following. Certainly three major groups shall be considered which are the market environment, selling organizations and buying firms.
Market environments changed tremendously over the recent years. While a few companies operated mostly in local markets the situation today is that much more of them exist and local boundaries are diminishing which leads to more competition on local and global basis and also more firms to focus on their core competences. This finally implies that in most cases it is not possible anymore for one company to provide a real solution that mostly is bundling several core competences. As a consequence many firms started to search for strategic but also on demand alliances that leverage their market position by combining several core competences on demand rather than growing all of them organically. Thus the capability to ally with partners is considered critical and is an additional differentiator for solution providers. As shown in 2.3 on page 10 this capability is part of the market based assets.
Thanks to this development it becomes also crucial for a firm to recognize its own position in the economy. A firm would have to decide whether it really has the core competences required to sell directly to customers. Alternatively it may be more appropriate to sell to a main supplier or backup supplier as a backend supplier. Dependant on this the author assumes that the service and solution orientation may differ since a backend supplier may need a different strategy.
This leads to the question what drives sellers in general to move towards solutions orientation. Science has perhaps not yet identified all drivers for the emergence of solutions from a selling firm perspective. The mindset of sales organizations is reflected

Julien Schnerrer is engaged in the telecommunication industry for many years. After his early engineering career, he held various positions in B2B marketing and sales at the telecommunication industry. While working, Julien Schnerrer studied 'International Management' at the 'Hochschule für Oekonomie und Management' in Berlin, Frankfurt and Stuttgart. Today, the author is working as a Product Line Manager for a leading vendor in the telecommunication market that has successfully managed the turnaround from a product to a solution seller. This study was highly influenced by his daily observations derived in a real economy environment - often contradictory to theoretical opinions and thoughts. Further, the writing of this study has been highly supported by Dr. Jan Lakotta, ESCP Europe.