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Just search new here. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review.

I'm Sarah Green.

I'm talking today with Matt Dixon,

co-author of the article The End of Solution Sales.

He's a director at the Corporate Executive Board.

Matt, thanks much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, sir.

So, Solution Sales has been the name of the game now for quite a while.

What are the limitations with Solution Sales and why do you see that now coming to an end?

Yeah, you're right. In sales we talk about the big evolution that happened, you know, depending on who you

ask two to three decades ago from the shift away from selling products to

customers into selling solutions and you know solution sales as an approach and not speaking

about any specific methodology but really the general way in which it's practiced today by most big companies is about actually finding customers who have problems coming in having sales people who can ask smart questions and figure out a way based on what the customer says to kind of attach that company's solution to the customer's problem.

The issue with that really is over the past five to seven years maybe give or take what

we've seen happen is really an explosion in the amount of information and

support available to help them understand how to solve problems so they had a problem they just

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