• Modify 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 into 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 and 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 just 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 sold 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 results.

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.