Solution Selling is All in Your Mind.

While the term "solution selling" has been batted around for decades, most sales pros are still selling products, not solutions. This is mostly because they don't understand the difference, which is subtle. In fact, the main difference between selling a solution and selling a product isn't what you're selling, but how you think about what you're selling. Here are the four mental "shifts" that you need to make to sell solutions rather than just products:

1. Think about what you sell as a verb rather than a noun. Suppose your company makes computer chip manufacturing hardware. If you think of your job as selling "chip manufacturing hardware" (a noun), you'll tend to talk product features, interfaces, and other technical details. By contrast, if you think of your job as selling "easier and cheaper chip manufacturing" (a verb), you will naturally tend to talk to customers about how you can help their chip fabrication plants become faster and more cost effective. The same is true of all other "products" and "solutions."
2. Think about yourself as the customer's ally rather than an adversary. There's a tendency amongst sales pros to think of selling as something that you do to a customer. You "convince" the customer to buy, you "overcome" objections, you "win" the business, you "conquer" the territory. While that way of thinking can be motivating, it also keeps you at odds with the customer's true needs. Rather than viewing yourself as the customer's goading adversary, view yourself as the customer's ally by visualizing how you can help the customer achieve specific business goals.
3. Think about sales calls as inquiries rather than pitches. Rather than talking to the customer about what product can do, use questions to lead the customer to the natural conclusion that the customer needs you to help them solve their problem or achieve their goal. Ask intelligent questions that the prospect is capable of answering, so that the two of your can discover whether the customer really needs your help. Then use further questions to help the customer visualize how things would be better if your solution were up and running.
4. Think about disqualifying a prospect as a success rather than a failure. Don't doggedly try to sell something to a prospect. Instead, make it clear from the start that you're absolutely not going to propose anything that the customer doesn't really need. Then, if it turns out that the customer really doesn't need anything you have to offer, thank the customer, leave and then celebrate! Why? Because if your goal is truly to help customers, it's a victory if you help them by keeping them from wasting their money.

By the way, the above is based on a conversation with Michael Bosworth and John Holland, co-authors of Customer Centric Selling (McGraw-Hill, 2003).