3/20/2025-Consultative selling inch by inch

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.

The buyer starts the meeting by saying, "You go first and show me what ya got, and I’ll tell you if we have anything to discuss."

Don’t ya just love that?

Don’t let that buyer shake ya…stand tall. It’s mostly an ego move.

Proceed to your consultative playbook:

1. Ask a strategic open-ended question.
2. Listen intently.
3. Qualify.
4. Present a slice of your value prop customized for that customer and topic.
5. Re-qualify.
6. Rinse/repeat.

Jump into a conference room for some lunch practice with a partner! (Fine…Zoom with your BFF.)

After choking down your salami sandwich, direct your role-playing partner to shoot the above line at you: "You go first and tell me what you got…".

Practice delivering a crisp, clean response that summarizes your VP, then hit the consultative selling button and activate the blueprint above.

Don’t worry about your shot at selling – or thinking about when to pitch – keep the conversation going. You’ll know when to incrementally insert your value prop into the discussion.

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. (You know that that means…!)

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.

This clip from the series White Collar is way far away from consultative selling; it shows the other side of the coin: aspirational selling.

It also offers a great message about customer profiling: don’t!

You’ll rocket upwards when you expertly combine solution-selling and dream-selling!