People don’t like to be sold – But they love to buy
Jeffrey Gitomer
Consultative selling has always been building relationships with customers and recommending the right product or service that would meet their needs or challenges while removing the pushy sales person in you from the equation. This approach is successful when you as a salesperson have the authority in your domain, subject, industry or product and you can demonstrate this by first understanding the customer’s goals and making suitable recommendations. Basically, your prospect is ready to trust you in their buying journey.
This approach is mostly adopted by b2b sales teams for reasons like – Increased buyer’s knowledge on products and competition, longer sales cycles, High value deals and multiple people involved in the decision-making process. However, this approach works equally good in B2C.
We will discuss both B2C & B2B.
B2C
Example1
Let us say, you are visiting a store to buy a mobile phone on which you have some features and functionality in mind. You may not tell the salesguy upfront all your requirements but you would eventually do so if that salesguy is good at asking you questions around your needs or goals in buying a phone. Now, that salesguy has an opportunity to recommend the latest products that might meet your goals and voila, you are ready to hear what he/she may say. Remember, you still know you have the purchase decision with you but you are actively considering the Salesguy’s recommendation.
Example2
In the insurance or finance domain, the sales people are mostly called as Insurance advisers or financial consultants. Why not Insurance product seller or financial product seller. Why? Customer’s make decisions on insurance and other finances based on the trust factor and the credibility of the sales person visiting them who is supposed to effectively navigate them to meet their financial goals. Hence, it is important that the salesperson is an adviser or a consultant in the deal closing and be in a better position to request for referral leads later.
We sales guys would have come across so many articles about identifying pain areas of our clients. But have we ever realised that most of the pain points clients refer to are missing ease of use or increase in productivity or optimising cost? If we focus and stress on these points to customers, it will lighten up the discussion.
B2B
While today’s buyers are increasingly aware of the choices they have, it is more prevalent with B2B customers, who not only do some research before giving an appointment to the sales person but would also have taken feedback or references from their peer network. Sometimes, salespeople may not know so many details about competition but believe they can learn about competition from the prospect itself if they build a good relationship with the prospect first. Let’s see how we can master consultative selling in B2B.
Have an organisation wide strategy in place–
Approaching a knowledgeable buyer is not the same as meeting an average buyer. Have an organisation wide strategy for b2b customers right from lead sourcing to qualification of leads, lead nurturing, marketing, communication and content, sales presentations, pricing, and customer success. Do your discovery (probing) correctly. This is must with a B2B prospect as the proposal you make must be based on the needs and challenges and they have to show it to other people in the decision-making process.
Backup your client submission with data–
Assuming, you are selling a CRM software, or a group Insurance plan to corporates, use your expertise to come up with a plan and submit a report with the implications of having a solution and not having one in place, effect on employee morale or productivity, loss of revenue, time, and ease of effort. Get to the depths of Department-wise implications if possible.
Show examples of how CRM helps businesses of similar nature. Your report can be general about CRM for sales companies and need not be about your specific product or service. Share your company business newsletters when required, which will talk about the solution capabilities and business use cases that you are solving.
Too much information–
Information is important, but not too many details, which will either confuse the client or make him ask you more questions for which you do not have an answer.
For example, you may say, your CRM can connect with your current attendance system through an API or FTP (File transfer protocol). This is a straightforward solution, but if you tell them that you also have a manual approach of downloading the data from the attendance system and parsing it through a shared folder, etc. This makes the client confused between manual and automated versions.
Admit to Client’s perspective–
Do not try to change their perspective on what is already working well for them rather, explain how upgraded or futuristic your product or solution could be in the current or future challenges.
Consulting without knowing how you fit–
Having a product – customer fit is important and do not hesitate to tell them if you cannot solve their problems right now. This helps you be seen as a trusted person and when you can solve their problem better than existing solutions, you would probably get the first chance from the customer.
SUMMARY
Consultative selling goes a long way. Start identifying customers needs, challenges and goals, recommend them the right product or service and be sure to tell the availability or serving capacity from your end. This builds trust factor and gets you closer to the deal in case you can meet the client’s goals. Remember to align your follow up strategy too.
