Are you looking to increase your sales volume? Have you been wracking your brain for new ideas and new ways to grow the business? Nearly every sales professional would agree that it is easier to retain accounts and increase volume with existing clients than prospect for new business. However, getting more business from your current customers can be somewhat like getting the proverbial blood from a turnip.

One thing you may want to look at is your relationship with your customers. Ask yourself how they view you. Do they see you as a supplier or a solutions provider. A supplier is one who works all the sales angles to build a relationship and get the account by selling them on their resource and capabilities "as a supplier." At that point the hard selling ends and the "supplier" waits for the customer to need his/her services.

 A solutions provider works just as hard to build the relationship and sell the customer on all they can do. Except a solutions provider goes much deeper by getting to know their client’s business, the challenges they face, how their organization is structured, what their sales and marketing goals are, how they are perceived in the marketplace and who their competitors are. By gaining as much knowledge and information as possible about their client, they can accurately and effectively identify ways to match their resources and capabilities with the needs of their client. Knowing your client’s business also enables you to establish credibility and allows you to present your ideas with authority.

Here are a few successful recommendations for establishing yourself as a solutions provider in the mind of your customer.

• Do Your Homework
  If your client is a public company, get a copy of their annual report. Learn as much as you can about every division, product line and distribution channel they utilize. Find out who their competitors are and how they stack up against them. If you can, try to learn what incentives and promotions their competitors are engaged in.
   

• Know Their Website
  If they have a website, visit it and become familiar with its content. Company websites can have a wealth of information including:

• Ask Lots Of Questions
  In addition to offline and online research, ask lots of questions. When you have your client’s attention (either on the phone or in person), get him/her to tell you about their sales and marketing goals, the obstacles they face, the marketplace challenges, distribution channel problems. The more you can get them to talk about their business and the challenges they face, the greater your ability will be to identify solutions. Also, you should ask for recommendations for who else within the organization you should meet to learn about their role in the company and the problems and challenges they face.

One of the best ways to get to know your client’s business and identify problems is by spending time with your client in the marketplace. If your client is a restaurant or fast food chain, ask for permission to work a shift. If they distribute their product using route drivers, spend a day in the truck with the driver. Spend a day making sales calls with one of the salespeople.

One great example is of a marketing executive who was preparing for an important presentation to a group of McDonald’s and Coke Cola executives about a crew incentive that the two companies were planning to co-fund. To effectively conceive and present incentive recommendations to motivate the mostly 16-20 year-old audience was no small task. What the marketing executive did was to arrange to work for a day at a local McDonald’s in order to experience life behind the counter in a fast food restaurant. As a result of his day "in the trenches" several important changes were made to the incentive proposal and when it was presented to the Coke and McDonald’s executives, he was able to reinforce his recommendations by recounting what he had learned "on the job" and in interviews with crew members and store managers. This served to establish a stronger level of credibility with the clients and gave greater weight to the overall recommendations being proposed.

The best and most successful solutions providers are those who are invited to be in on their clients’ sales and marketing planning meetings and sessions. At this point you have the ability to immediately seize opportunities to work your company’s resources into their marketing plans. The only way this becomes possible is when you have successfully established yourself as a reliable resource and most important, an authority on the clients’ business.

Ultimately if you are going to be a solutions provider, you need to know what problems there are to be solved. To identify the problems you need to have done your research, asked the questions, and have established a level of credibility with your client. You need to be aggressively looking for opportunities to get in front of your client with solutions. If you’ve done your homework, established a reputation and are perceived as a solutions resource, you are certain to expand the volume of business with your client. Much more so than if you just waited for them to come to you.