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It’s Only Common Sense: The Solutions Meister

We are all in the business of providing solutions to problems that customers have. All of the things that we do and sell—products, services, treatments, etc.—are solutions to customer problems and fill needs that our customers have.

For example, restaurants feed hungry people. Hardware stores provide solutions to problems, whether building a house or fixing a leaky faucet. Doctors and hospitals provide treatment and cures for sick people. Undertakers provide funeral services. All businesses started because someone saw a need and decided to fulfill it, which is the very definition of a business. Thus, we are all solution providers—or better yet, solution meisters!

In our particular market segment, we provide electronic technology solutions ranging from PCB design, fabrication, and assembly to supplying these companies with the products and equipment they need. Those of us in sales are supposed to be selling the best solutions for our customers’ problems. If we are selling bare boards, then it is our job to sell the best PCB solutions on the market today. The same is true with PCB design and assembly. That’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

But what if one of your customers needs something other than what you sell? What if they, for example, need a rigid-flex PCB, and you only sell rigid PCBs? Are you supposed to send them to a competitor?

Yes! That is exactly what you are supposed to do. The best salespeople are solution meisters, first and foremost. A great salesperson will service their customer and provide them with a solution, whatever that solution is. Most importantly, you do whatever it takes to provide that customer a solution to their problem.

If this sounds counterintuitive to you, then you should rethink your role as a salesperson. Besides providing solutions, a true salesperson has to gain customers’ trust and loyalty. You have to ingrain yourself into the customer’s circle of trust before you can count on that customer for life. In the end, that is what sales is all about.

Are you dedicated to your customers enough to provide them with a good and honest solution, even to the point where it could hurt you in the short-term? If you are, then you are truly a solutions meister, and you will have the privilege of earning that customer’s trust and loyalty. That trust and loyalty will extend beyond the company they are working for now, and to any company, they might end up working for in the future.

Here are three examples of being a true solutions meister.

1. Your customer needs a problem solved that has nothing to do directly with you or what you provide; it could even be non-business, like a home repair problem. Do some research for them and help them to solve the problem. If you find a solution, that would be fantastic. But even if you don’t, the very act of trying to help them will go a long way to developing their trust toward you that will certainly pay off in the future.

2. Your customer needs a special technology version of the product that you do sell, but you cannot provide that particular technology through your own company. That shouldn’t matter­. A true solutions meister will dedicate themself to finding the customer the right technology solution. Of course, you will do your homework to ensure that you provide the right company with the right solution and not one that could hurt your future business with that customer in the long run. You might be dedicated to providing a trusting relationship, but we all know you’re not an idiot. Be smart and find the right company to provide that technology and develop a good working partnership with that company so that you both recommend one another in similar cases.

3. The customer is looking for, and really needs, a solution that is better and more economical than the one you provide. This is the toughest situation of all, and I was once faced with this dilemma. I worked with several companies that needed high-tech PCBs made out of LMR Kevlar—a very expensive, hard to process CTE management material. We were one of the few PCB shops in the U.S., or maybe the world, that could successfully process the boards with this material, but we were also the only shop in the U.S. that had helped develop Thermount—a copper Kevlar material that was much less expensive and much easier to process.

Thermount was a better solution for our customers, and that was the tough part; Thermount was so much easier to use that just about any of our competitors would be able to produce boards using it. This, of course, would increase the field of viable competitors, but we did the right thing; we told our customers about Thermount. They specified it and invited other shops to bid on the boards, and in the end, we lost some of that business. In the long run, however, they considered us their solutions meisters, and we developed a bond of trust and loyalty with them. They became a customer for life.

We took our role as solutions providers seriously. Although it hurt us in the short term, it made us a better and more viable vendor partner in the end, which is what a trusted, solutions-providing vendor partner should strive for.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.