3/20/2024-Consultative Selling

Consultative selling is easier when you have been working with your prospect or client for some time, but you aim to establish yourself in a "consultative" manner on Meeting One.

How can you be consultative when facing a buyer who, in your first pitch meeting, says, "You go first and tell me what you got, and I’ll let you know if there’s a match."

Answer: master the art of incremental pitching.

You: "Hey, we sell a lot of "pies"…try this cherry one first and tell me what you think."

Then, WAIT and stay silent to force their participation. They’ll talk…you just have to promote it by not breaking the silence.

Jump into a conference room for some lunch practice with a partner! After eating your salami sandwich, instruct your role-playing partner to shoot that line at you (the one listed above…"You go first…").

Practice your response.

Regardless of how a prospect tries to manage you in a meeting, use the incrementality approach.

Briefly describe one of your features, explain its benefit to them, and then qualify the buyer for feedback.

Rinse and repeat.

And for sure, DO NOT pitch or preach.

Consultative selling requires skill and dexterity in a few key areas:

1. Account/company knowledge: understand your prospect’s business and challenges before sitting down for your first meeting. (You can’t possibly know everything, but you won’t be able to establish trust without knowing something.)

2. Probing skills: understand when to ask which questions. Which brings up #3…

3. Execute a needs analysis strategy that moves you quickly toward the right buyer pain points and creates a strategic conversation quickly.

4. Tone: never sound or come off sounding preachy or heavy-handed. Talk, don’t advise.

5. Don’t pitch.

Consultative selling is easier when you have been working with your prospect or client for some time, but your challenge is to present yourself in a "consultative" manner from Day One.

The type of consultative selling you’ll see in this clip positions the consultant as pretty cocky (dontcha think?)…but that’s okay because it’s just a scene from The Social Network (3 minutes).

You’ll be more relaxed and humble in YOUR consultative selling.

Consultative selling requires firmness, confidence, and a whole lot of listening. Earning the right to be a CS means you’ll need to establish a lot of trust.