Consultative Selling? Please

So you employ a consultative selling approach? Uh huh. I don't mean to sound overly sarcastic, but the term consultative selling has been randomly thrown around by sales people and sales managers who want to seem better-intended than they really are. The question is ... are we really fooling anyone? Sorry, but no. Here's a simple acid test that sales managers can apply to their team, or sales people can apply to themselves individually:

• Can you intelligently discuss your client's latest industry trends, specific to their vertical and their role in that vertical?
• Can you talk in language unique to the client's vertical market and their role? Do you understand what the executive's role in within his/her company? Overall responsibilities?
• What are the top 10 issues this role is currently dealing with? What keeps them awake at night? What are their hot buttons?
• How is this person measured? What gets them promoted/fired/ bonuses?
• What other roles in the client's organization are impacted by the above issues and how?
• Can you build value for your solution that solves a current issue that executive is dealing with? If not, are you helping them find a solution that will address their issues ... even if the solution is not your company's?
• How often do you start your selling efforts at the executive level?
• Do you have overwhelming credibility early in the sales cycle?

If you cannot answer these questions, then sorry to say, you're not employing a consultative selling approach. A consultative selling approach requires you to be able to relate to the executive that you're interacting with ... almost on a personal level. Your client does not need a professional friend ... they need someone who gets them and can add value. Otherwise, you're simply a quota-carrying sales person to them.

The University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler business school conducted a study to determine why executives grant access to sales people. The #1 reason is:

Ability of the salesperson to understand their issues

For my sales manager friends take the above acid test for your sales team collectively. How would they fare as a group? Here are the two responses I get:

• Our top performers would probably do pretty well
• We would not do very good at all

The most common answer is the first ... that the top performers would do pretty well. Why is that? Because there is an absolute, definitive correlation. Let's move up the ladder and execute on the term that we all love to use ... "Consultative Selling". Selling is more fun truly employing this method anyway. Go have some fun.

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