Marketing for most MBA students who don’t have a business background is a mystery. To me, Marketing conjured up the following concepts -- creatively promoting existing products, new products being launched, brands, and advertising.  Our International Marketing course at the Hult International Business School (HIBS) in fact covered these facets of marketing – and quite a bit more.  I found Marketing to be much more strategic and critical to a company’s success than I had expected.

Being basically a “creative person at heart” and “a big technology fan”, I was so fascinated with the marketing function and the roles and responsibilities of a marketer that I took another course on marketing the first chance that I had – during the third term of my program when we were allowed to sign up for electives.  I frankly didn’t know much about what I was getting into when I signed up for my next marketing course, which was Solutions Marketing.  I had only heard of the concept, and couldn’t find much reference about this relatively new and emerging concept.  Since I was somewhat familiar with the concept of solutions through my marketing course at Hult , I decided that it was worth the risk. As it turned out, I unwittingly introduced a fascinating new dimension to my understanding of marketing, which altered the way I would look at marketing in the future.

Getting my Head Around the Concept of Solutions Marketing

I have to admit, it took a couple of class sessions to figure out what "Solutions Marketing" was, and why it was worth learning.   Probably the most important concept that I picked up early in the course was that solutions marketing is not just about marketing tangible products, but also services and a customized experience.   The official definition of a “solution”, in the context of B2B businesses, is a combination of products and services that focuses on a particular customer problem and in the end provides measurable business value for customers.

Though this type of marketing is more suited for a B2B environment, we also learned that the principles of marketing solutions can also be applied in a B2C context. In fact, since I’ve taken the course, I’ve observed that more and more B2B IT companies are keeping solutions at the center of their approach in the B2C side of their operations. Not just that, in my current role as a consultant to a FMCG major, solutions strategy (which I independently define as “solutions blocks” model ) is at the core of understanding the consumer landscape and defining  the WHO, WHAT & HOW approaches of the product and service offerings.

The concept of solutions was fascinating for the whole class. Given it’s practical application amongst many technology behemoths like IBM, Avaya, Siemens, Juniper Networks, EMC, Cisco to name a few, students like me were benefited to understand the theoretical concepts being applied in real life business situations in such organizations. This was aided by a special project which was crafted to be an integral part of our course.

During this project we had to work with a solutions leader (generally a Director) in one of such (amongst many other) organization to understand the solutions concept end to end.  In my opinion this was the highlight of my learning experience given it not only gave me the opportunity to interact with a real life solutions expert but also address queries, understand the current challenges and learn first hand how solutions is working its magic in winning and retaining client relationships.

At the culmination of the course we (an International team of 5-6 fellow students) had to present back to the client on what we understood of their solutions strategy, current challenges and recommendations to overcome those challenges. This gave me incredible confidence in the subject given all of us had been through an immense learning experience with highly practical immersion.  I found this experiential approach to be extremely useful on the way to becoming a solutions expert.

Taking my Knowledge of Solutions to the Next Level

It’s probably useful to understand that my background was in the financial sector.  I worked closely with IT function, launching new initiatives, systems and processes inside a major bank prior to entering HIBS. Learning about marketing was somewhat similar to learning to speak Chinese!

As a result of being so inspired by the Solutions Marketing course, I convinced my professor to agree to be my academic advisor for an Independent Study course on a Solutions Marketing topic.   This allowed me to learn by conducting rigorous academic research (a first in my life) on a very emerging subject in marketing world.

The topic that I agreed to research was “Defining the Solutions Creation Process”.   The scope of the project really was to come up with a model which large organizations (mostly technology-based) could apply to create and offer solutions to their customers.  No such standard model yet existed in the academic world.

What started out as simple curiosity about what Solutions Marketing resulted in an unexpected journey into a detailed aspect of one type of activity that Solutions Marketers engage in.  Regardless of the topic, I would suggest that all MBA students take the opportunity to immerse themselves in a “deep-dive” research project which would force them to understand how academic principles are  actually applied in the real world of business.

Well after 3 gruelling months of juggling with module C studies, the research and my wife’s shopping list, I did come up with a standard approach to Solutions creation and call it the solutions blocks model, which provides any organization to approach solutions creation in a step by step approach called blocks. (Refer the illustration of the solutions blocks model).

Learning about Solutions Marketing – Was it Worth it?

Any management course taught at business schools has its due worth when the academic learning finds application in the real world.  Solutions Marketing course at Hult has been one such experience of idea to execution application, which was worth the time and energy for a future marketer like me.  It not only helped me dwell into real life solutions offered by current tech biggies but also helped me observe  various industries where solutions are (and have been) in application albeit in hindsight and still continues to evolve, especially financial services.  If we look around solutions driven approach is all around us.  Telecom firms offer it through value added services to its customers, Fitness centres offer it through customized plans and so on so forth.  All it needs is an immersive experience in Solutions Marketing to understand the underlying fundamentals which drive organizations to solve consumer problems through the solutions approach.

Today as an Innovation Consultant specializing in brand management in the FMCG space (which is traditionally B2C), I find application of multiple tenets of Solutions Marketing on a day to day basis. Be it Consultative approach, Offering creation or Solutions Execution,  I am truly living a solutions marketer life applying the solutions block model and loving the fact that this puts me at the cutting edge of an emerging marketing domain ready to dominate both the product and services world of the future.

Author: Sumit Sood, MBA, Hult International Business School

Syndication Partner - Solutions Insights