The SOLVE Methodology
How the framework works, how conversations are scored, and why an 85 means something.
Most sales training gives you techniques. SOLVE gives you a sequence, a standard, and a way to measure whether you actually did it. This page explains all three.
The Five Steps
SOLVE is a five-step consultative sequence
The order matters. Each step earns the right to the next one, and skipping one is what creates every stall and objection later.
Situation
Understand the situation before you say a word about your product. Who is this person, what is actually going on in their life or their business, and why are they having this conversation today? Most professionals skip straight to what they sell. The situation is the ground everything else stands on.
Open with Questions
Lead with curiosity, not a pitch. Your first move is a question, not a presentation. Open questions surface information that closed questions never reach, and they signal to the other person that you are trying to understand them rather than process them.
Listen for the Outcome
Hear the future they are actually trying to reach. The product is never the point. Nobody wants a drill; they want the hole. Nobody wants a loan; they want the house, the security, the payment they can live with. Listen past the request to the outcome behind it.
Visualize Success
Help them picture what "solved" looks like before you propose anything. When someone can see the outcome clearly, the decision stops feeling like a risk and starts feeling obvious. Skip this step and you get "let me think about it."
Engineer the Solution
Build the answer around what they told you, even when the honest answer is not you. Engineering means constructing a real solution to a real problem, with honest expectations, not steering them toward whatever you happened to have available.
The Scoring Rubric
Every conversation is scored against the same five categories
This rubric is published on purpose. Your reps should know exactly what they are being measured on.
Needs discovery
The drill vs. the hole. Did the consultant uncover what the customer is actually trying to accomplish, not just what they asked for? Surface-level order-taking scores low here. Genuine curiosity about the underlying situation scores high.
Objection prevention via early discovery
Objections are diagnostics, not obstacles. This category measures whether the consultant surfaced and resolved concerns early through good questions, rather than waiting to fight them at the end. "Too expensive" late in a conversation usually means Visualize Success never happened.
Trust building
Did the consultant earn the right to ask harder questions? Did the customer open up, or stay guarded? Trust is not politeness. It is whether the other person felt understood enough to tell you the truth.
Natural, decision-focused close
Did the conversation move toward a real decision without pressure? A good close is not a technique. It is the natural next step when someone genuinely understands their options and feels good about one of them.
Relationship continuity / follow-up
Did the conversation end with a concrete, mutual next step, or did it end as a handoff? This is where most conversations quietly leak value.
Where It Stalled
Every scored conversation names the earliest SOLVE step that broke down
This matters more than the number.
A score tells you how it went. "Where it stalled" tells you what to fix. If a conversation stalls at Listen for the Outcome, no amount of closing practice will help, the problem happened three steps earlier. Coaching starts with a diagnosis instead of a debate, and reps stop guessing at what went wrong.
The Standard
To advance a level, five conversations must each score 85 or better
Not an 85 average. Five individual qualifying sessions. That threshold is deliberate, and it is not easy.
To advance a level in the SOLVE Academy, a consultant must complete five separate conversations scoring 85 or better on each one. Not an 85 average, five individual qualifying sessions. One great conversation doesn't advance you; consistency does.
An 85 means the consultant genuinely uncovered the customer's real situation and needs, not that they were pleasant or smooth. A friendly, well-mannered conversation that never digs in will not reach 85. A rep who never uncovers the real motivation cannot score above 85 no matter how good they sounded, because the rubric weights discovery heavily on purpose.
Difficulty also rises with each level. Beginner conversations build fundamentals. Intermediate adds real objections and harder personalities. Advanced runs full discovery-to-decision conversations under pressure. The same standard applies at each level, but what it takes to earn five qualifying sessions keeps getting harder.
There are no easy 85s, and there is no shortcut around the fifth one. That is the point.
Why the Score Is Consistent
This is where SOLVE differs from asking a general-purpose AI to grade a call
Ask ChatGPT or any generic chatbot to score the same conversation twice and you will get two different answers, because there is no fixed standard behind it. It is grading against a general impression of what a good conversation sounds like, and it is agreeable by design. It will tell you the call was great if you seem to want to hear that.
SOLVE Coach™ measures every conversation against one fixed, published rubric, the same five steps and five categories on this page. The same conversation returns the same score. An 85 on a Tuesday phone call means the same thing as an 85 on a certification exam. That consistency is what makes the score usable for certification, for coaching, and for tying advancement to demonstrated skill.
A grade you cannot reproduce is an opinion. A score you can reproduce is a measurement.
Conversations That Never Repeat
Engineered around an outcome. Never the same conversation twice.
Every practice Conversation is engineered around a defined ideal outcome, but the customer's personality, motivations, and objections vary within it. The same scenario never plays the same way twice.
This is deliberate. If reps could memorize a path to an 85, the score would measure recall instead of skill. Instead they have to think their way there every time, reading a new person, asking real questions, and adapting. That is what makes the practice transfer to real customers.
Real Conversation Scoring
Upload a real call, a transcript, or a text thread. Get scored by the same rubric, not a random AI opinion.
Every other platform grades rehearsal. SOLVE also grades the real thing. Upload an actual call recording, paste a call transcript, or paste a real text or email exchange with a customer, and SOLVE Coach™ scores it against the exact same five-step SOLVE rubric your team certifies on, the same step-by-step breakdown, the same coaching, and a named diagnosis of precisely where the conversation stalled.
This is not generic AI feedback. Ask ChatGPT to grade a sales call and you'll get a different opinion every time you ask, a grader with no standard, no sequence, and no memory of your last score. SOLVE Coach™ measures every conversation, practiced or real, against one fixed standard: the published SOLVE Framework. An 85 means the same thing on a Tuesday phone call as it does on a certification exam. That's not a grade. That's a measurement system.
Real calls, transcripts, texts, and emails
Audio recordings are transcribed and scored automatically. Already have a transcript from your phone system, Zoom, or dealer CRM? Paste it straight in, along with any text or email thread. Up to 20 real conversations scored per seat, every month, included with every seat, at no extra cost.
"Where it stalled"
Every scored conversation names the earliest SOLVE step that broke down, so coaching starts with a diagnosis, not a debate. When practice scores and field scores sit side by side on your dashboard, you're not wondering whether the practice transfers. You're watching it transfer.
Coaching, not surveillance
Every score and every word of feedback goes to the rep, always. Managers see the trends; reps see how to get better. Advocates, not opponents. That's the standard we score them on, so it's the standard we hold ourselves to.
Platforms grade the dress rehearsal. SOLVE grades opening night, with the same rubric, the same coach, and the same standard.
You're responsible for having the right to any recording you submit, including consent where required by law.
Built on Research, Tested in the Field
Not sales folklore
Wade Skrimager
The SOLVE Framework was built on a psychology degree with formal training in experimental research and statistical analysis, then field-tested across three decades in automotive, financial services, real estate, home improvement, and leadership development.
Put It Into Practice
Reading the methodology is not the same as running it live
That is what the platform is for.
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