Thull is a leading-edge strategist and valued advisor for executive teams of major companies worldwide. As President and CEO of Prime Resource Group, he has designed and implemented business transformation and professional development programs for companies like Shell Global Solutions, Siemens, 3M, Microsoft, Intel, Citicorp, IBM and Georgia-Pacific, as well as many fast track, start-up companies. He is a thought leader in the arena of sales and marketing strategies for companies involved in complex sales. Thull has conducted more than 2,500 speeches and seminars worldwide. He is the author of the best selling books Mastering the Complex Sale: How to Compete and Win When the Stakes are High, The Prime Solution: Close the Value Gap, Increase Margins, and Win the Complex Sale, and most recently, Exceptional Selling: How the Best Connect and Win in High Stakes Sales.
Many of the same core concepts in this book were previously discussed in Thull’s Mastering the Complex Sale. However, what readers have in this sequel is a much sharper focus on two of the three objectives specified in the subtitle–close the value gap and increase margins while winning the complex sale. According to Thull, prime solutions deliver optimal results which leverage value to the highest level of each customer’s business, ensure that customers are provided with the best answer to the given problem, and provide solution implementation and value-enhancement strategies that enable customers to achieve the ROI that they anticipated. Getting beyond customer satisfaction and even loyalty to what is widely referred to as “customer evangelism” requires that what he calls “robust solutions” must be provided consistently, time and again, whatever questions must be answered and whatever problems must be solved. To sustain that relationship, therefore, Thull recommends three separate but interdependent protocols: value maximization of product, process, and performance; decision acuity that enables customers to recognize–and thereby appreciate–the tangible benefits of the solution(s) provided; and optimization of a measurable ROI. “The Prime Solution Cycle” (please see pages 179-194) requires a cross-functional effort; that is, communication, cooperation, and collaboration between and among all areas within the provider’s organization.
In Part I, Thull explores the environment in which complex solutions must compete. Then in Part II, he shifts his attention to an analysis of how to translate the demands of that environment into the three protocols that define, guide, and inform prime solutions. Finally, in Part III, Thull responds to a question which each reader is probably asking as he or she arrives at page 125: “How can my organization develop and then deliver prime solutions to our own customers?” Four chapters are devoted to Thull’s response. First, he recommends a process of discovery and engagement that will reveal opportunities among those prospects currently experiencing insufficiency of the value offered. Next, diagnose and quantify what is needed. Then, design and produce what will fill (solve) the given need. Finally, deliver, measure, and improve on the solution(s). Once having carefully explained the diagnostic phase, Thull goes far beyond it. After the determination of need(s), how to design and produce a “robust” solution with cross-functional communication, cooperation, and collaboration? How to market it? How to deliver it? And then, how to ensure that the given customer derives maximum ROI and knows it? Thull’s answers to these questions will guide and inform his reader. Mastering the complex sale with “prime solutions” is an achievable reality.
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