One of the most difficult but also most rewarding parts of solutions selling is unearthing your customers’ exact needs and problems. I say it is quite difficult because sometimes even our customers don’t know what they want or what solution they’re looking for. We often have a hard time then articulating the value of our solution to them because we haven’t collected enough information from our customers to make it relevant for them. This is why in today’s episode; we have an expert presenter with us to take us through how he communicates with his customers and what better way we can use to ask questions.

Doc Ballje is a Subject Matter Expert and Solutions Architect in the printing industry. He is highly experienced with PaperCut as well as other print management, copier solutions, and Data Collection Agents having worked for over 20 years.

Key Takeaways

Tune in to our conversation with Doc Ballje and learn:

• His career in radio way before entering the printing industry
• How printing has evolved and why it remains integral to businesses today
• What copiers and printers can do for any company or organization
• What Doc’s role is specifically in selling printers
• Shifting from commodity selling to solutions selling
• How his experience and background in the radio industry became one of his unique strengths as a solutions Sales Engineer and in communicating with customers
• Why solution selling is less talk about features of the product and rather asking questions to the customer and understanding their specific needs and problems
• How to convince the customer that it’s important to meet with a technical expert 
• Active listening and being comfortable with dead air
• How to present the solution without the customer being too overwhelmed with information
• Important tips on how to communicate best with your customer
• Finding that balance between showing and telling when you’re selling a physical product
• Storytelling method and Doc’s philosophy on how to gain your customer’s trust during a demo

20:16 “Use some good techniques for solutions sales to make sure they’re not just talking about a copier they’re talking about how this will benefit them and if it’s done right, how they can actually get a return on investment for what they spent and not have an expenditure itself.”

29:55 The beauty of a solution sale: “If you specifically have the solution that your customer is looking for their problem, price is almost out of the window.”

31:52 When Don talks about tech: I talk about it in regular words. that they understand. This where a good solution salesperson needs to be, speaking about technology in regular words… and then another thing that I’ll do is, verify satisfaction, or verify that I’m understanding your problem. this is what I heard, now let me repeat back that this is what you need. Therefore, they know that you’re listening, and you know when they nod your head they go yeah that’s exactly it.”

34:47 How to articulate the value of a physical product using show and tell: “Probably the biggest help for that type of thing is the storytelling method, and that involves case studies. Storytelling is wonderful, people like hearing stories of how you’ve helped other customers and brought them to a success area that they’ve never reached before.”

41:22 Active listening to get better answers from your customer: “Start asking questions ask questions as long as you can. And then you’ll get to a point where you cant answer the questions and this is what you do. you say these are great questions, I would like to set up another appointment I’m gonna bring in my SE along with me who can explain a lot of this stuff and you close for the next appointment.”

Not So Fire Round

1- What do you love about solutions selling?

I love talking to customers and finding out what the problem is, it’s really fun to be able to do that. When the customer’s just hemming and hawing, and the salesperson couldn’t get that out of them I just get a big kick out of it.

2- What would you change about sales engineering?

From what I hear from some other folks who are pretty good, just the better techniques of asking questions, so many people including SEs are listening and wanting to reply right away without that dead air silence. I would like to see just a better way of asking questions or better vetting out of the process from a lot.

3- What tools, books or resources would you recommend to Sales Engineers?

I listen to a lot of webinars, I don’t have any specific books. a lot of what I do has just come from life experience, my radio career, just gives me the ability to speak and relate to people and all of my stuff I’ve really pulled from life’s experience. So I don’t have a good answer for that one, other than, I consume whatever I can, articles, webinars, as much information as I can.

4- What separates a great Sales Engineer from not-so-good ones?

At the end of the day, it’s pretty much going to be the close-ratio that you have. If you’re a good SE and you do everything the right way the salesperson’s next step, would be, okay. When do you want this delivered? and sign and so many engagements that I get involved with 70 -80% when I get involved the salesperson just have to get the process started, what do we need to get going, and that’s a sign of a good SE and that’s what separates them from a not so good one.

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