Sales B2B Sales

Solution Selling Fundamentals

A practical framework for diagnosing buyer problems, shaping value, and guiding complex B2B sales conversations

Solution Selling Fundamentals logo
Quick Course Facts
18
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
18
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
5.9
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Solution Selling Fundamentals Course

Solution Selling Fundamentals is a Sales course for professionals who want to move beyond product pitches and lead more effective buyer conversations. You will learn how to diagnose customer needs, connect solutions to measurable business outcomes, and guide complex B2B opportunities with more confidence and structure.

Build Stronger Sales Conversations With Solution Selling Fundamentals

  • Learn a practical framework for diagnosing buyer problems, shaping value, and guiding complex B2B sales conversations.
  • Improve discovery skills by identifying buyer pain, urgency, impact, root causes, and motivation.
  • Strengthen opportunity qualification by mapping stakeholders, decision processes, timing, budget, and fit.
  • Create clearer value narratives, tailored presentations, proposals, mutual action plans, and next steps.

This course teaches a problem-centered Sales approach for diagnosing needs, building value, and advancing B2B opportunities.

In Solution Selling Fundamentals, you will learn why effective Sales starts with the buyer’s business problem rather than a list of product features. The course explains the difference between product selling and problem-centered selling, helping you understand how to create more relevant conversations with prospects and customers.

You will practice preparing for high-value discovery conversations, asking questions that reveal business problems, and listening for consequences, root causes, and motivation. These skills help you identify where real urgency exists and where the cost of inaction may be stronger than the desire for change.

The course also covers stakeholder mapping, opportunity qualification, value case development, objection handling, competitive comparisons, and proposal alignment. By learning how to translate features into business outcomes and shape a buyer-focused value narrative, you will be better equipped to support complex B2B decisions.

By the end of the course, you will have a practical framework for diagnosing buyer problems, shaping value, and guiding complex B2B sales conversations. You will leave with a more disciplined Sales process and the ability to move opportunities forward through clarity, evidence, and buyer-centered next steps.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Foundations of Solution Selling

2 lessons

This lesson defines solution selling as a buyer-centered approach to diagnosing business problems, connecting those problems to measurable impact, and guiding the buyer toward a practical path forward…

Lesson 2: Product Selling vs. Problem-Centered Selling

17 min
This lesson introduces the core shift behind solution selling: moving from leading with product features to leading with the buyer's business problem. Learners will examine why product-centered conver…

Diagnosing Customer Needs

4 lessons

Lesson 3: Understanding Buyer Pain, Impact, and Urgency

20 min
In this lesson, students learn how to diagnose buyer pain in a disciplined way before presenting a solution. The focus is on separating surface complaints from business problems, uncovering measurable…

Lesson 4: Preparing for High-Value Discovery Conversations

18 min
This lesson prepares sales professionals to run discovery conversations that are worth the buyer's time and useful to the seller. It focuses on what to research, how to form a discovery hypothesis, ho…

Lesson 5: Asking Questions That Reveal Business Problems

22 min
This lesson teaches a practical questioning approach for uncovering real business problems in B2B sales conversations. Instead of leading with product features or accepting surface-level complaints, l…

Lesson 6: Listening for Root Cause, Consequences, and Motivation

20 min
In this lesson, Professor Mark Davis explains how solution sellers move beyond surface-level needs by listening for three signals: root cause, business consequences, and buyer motivation. These signal…

Opportunity Qualification

3 lessons

Lesson 7: Mapping Stakeholders and Buyer Roles

19 min
This lesson shows how to map the people who influence a B2B buying decision before you invest heavily in an opportunity. You will learn to identify economic buyers, technical evaluators, end users, ch…

Lesson 8: Qualifying Fit, Timing, Budget, and Decision Process

21 min
This lesson teaches a practical qualification discipline for complex B2B opportunities. You will learn how to test whether a deal is worth pursuing by examining four essentials: business fit, timing, …

Lesson 9: Identifying the Cost of Inaction

18 min
This lesson teaches sales professionals how to identify and quantify the cost of inaction : the business impact a buyer experiences if they delay, defer, or avoid solving a problem. In opportunity qua…

Building the Value Case

3 lessons

Lesson 10: Translating Features Into Business Outcomes

20 min
This lesson shows how to convert product capabilities into business outcomes that matter to buyers. Learners will practice moving from feature statements to operational impact, financial value, risk r…

Lesson 11: Creating a Value Narrative for the Buyer

21 min
In this lesson, learners build a practical value narrative that connects the buyer’s current problem, business impact, desired future state, and decision rationale. The focus is not on writing a polis…

Lesson 12: Tailoring Presentations to Buyer Priorities

19 min
In this lesson, Professor Mark Davis explains how to tailor a sales presentation around the buyer’s stated priorities instead of delivering a generic product overview. The focus is on converting disco…

Advancing the Sale

4 lessons

Lesson 13: Handling Objections Through Diagnosis and Evidence

22 min
Objections are not interruptions to the sales process; they are diagnostic signals. In this lesson, Professor Mark Davis shows how to handle buyer resistance by slowing down, clarifying the concern, i…

Lesson 14: Managing Competitive Comparisons and Status Quo Bias

20 min
This lesson teaches how to manage competitive comparisons without turning the sales conversation into a feature-by-feature debate. Learners will practice reframing competition around the buyer’s diagn…

Lesson 15: Aligning Proposals With Decision Criteria

19 min
This lesson teaches learners how to turn discovery findings into a proposal that directly reflects the buyer's stated decision criteria. Instead of treating the proposal as a generic summary of featur…

Lesson 16: Creating Mutual Action Plans and Clear Next Steps

18 min
Mutual action plans turn vague enthusiasm into a shared path forward. In solution selling, the goal is not to pressure the buyer into a next step, but to create clear agreement on what both sides must…

Execution and Practice

2 lessons

Lesson 17: Maintaining Deal Momentum Without Pressure Tactics

20 min
This lesson teaches a practical, buyer-respecting approach to keeping complex B2B opportunities moving without relying on artificial urgency, fear, or pressure tactics. Learners will distinguish healt…

Lesson 18: Practicing a Complete Solution Selling Conversation

24 min
In this lesson, learners practice a complete solution selling conversation from opening alignment through problem diagnosis, impact development, value framing, objection handling, and next-step commit…
About Your Instructor
Professor Mark Davis

Professor Mark Davis

Professor Mark Davis guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.