Consultative Selling

Today’s business environment offers less frequent opportunities to provide products and services to new customers, competition for new accounts is high and customers are very sensitive to cost. Under more typical market conditions, sellers have ample opportunity to find new customer prospects. The relative scarcity of new prospects can lead sales to increasingly focus on convincing the competitions customer’s to switch, first and foremost on the basis of lower price. In turn, lowest price sales can produce unfavorable margins.

 

The consultative sales approach addresses these and other issues prevalent in this type of selling environment. A consultative approach seeks to align the interests of buyer and seller and aims to provide customers with the lowest total cost of ownership. Consultative selling attempts to broaden the playing field by spreading competition over a greater range of deliverables, providing value to customers beyond just products and services, and building loyalty among customers. The approach requires ongoing buyer/seller relationships.

What distinguishes a sales consultant from a conventional salesperson, even when both are selling similar products and services, is the nature of the relationship between seller and buyer and the value this relationship adds to the products and services being sold. The consultant discovers and uncovers, educates, advises, is a customer service representative and an advocate for the customer. The consultative sales approach requires sales consultants to:

• Take the time to understand the customer’s business; it’s objectives and obstacles preventing success.
• Understand the products and services offered in sufficient depth to be able to answer customer questions fully and accurately
• Have the know-how to recommend an appropriate mix of products and services, tailored to the specific needs of the customer
• Have the ability to work with the customer to financially justify a solution and determine ROI
• Be familiar with contracts and disclosure documents and be able to explain them accurately
• Develop a solution for each unique customer
• Encourage communication and adopt a customer-in service mentality

The objective of a consultative salesperson should be to determine the immediate and near term needs of a customer and create a solution that addresses those needs at the least total cost. Successful sales consultants invest the time to understand their customer’s business in order to know which solution(s) are appropriate and deliver the most differentiated value.

Because the result of a successful consultative sale is a long-term relationship, transparency and complete understanding between buyer and seller is essential. This not only requires contracts and disclosure documents that are easily read and understood, but also depends on sales consultants who fully understand their products and services and can explain them, along with the costs and responsibilities that accompany them.

Consultative selling is appropriate for those individuals that understand the benefits of long term relationships, who want to maintain profit margins, build and maintain a full pipeline, reduce end of quarter hockey-stick effects, improve performance appraisals and build or maintain a stable business through new customer acquisitions as well as referrals from satisfied customers. 

Those who pursue the approach can identify their success not only by direct personal rewards but also corporate benefits that include fewer customer service issues and complaints, higher margins, and lower employee attrition rates.