Is Consultative Selling A Better Approach For Your Business?
Marketing Made Easy
One of the most effective selling approaches I have experienced in my career is “consultative selling.” It helps make potential clients aware that they have a need and, when done correctly, sets you up to explain how your product/service can address their now-recognized need.
The consultative selling approach focuses on understanding customer’s needs, challenges, and goals through active listening and open-ended questioning. It involves offering tailored solutions that address the customer’s requirements rather than leading with a product/service pitch. Essentially, you guide the customer through the buying decision process.
I was exposed to this selling model in the prescription pharmaceutical industry, calling on medical professionals. I found the approach excellent in engaging doctors in quality conversations about their personal experiences and recognized needs. It also made it easy to identify needs they hadn’t previously considered that my product might address better than their current favorite solution.
For example, one of the products I represented was an antibiotic that had the feature of creating minimum bacterial resistance. This was at a time when broad-spectrum antibiotics were firmly in favor. I used published clinical papers to document the emergence of the problem and help physicians see the resistance to broad-spectrum antibiotics as a problem.
Consultative selling is a 7-step process.
Research and Preparation. Understand the context in which the customer operates.
Engagement and Discovery. Listen and ask probing questions to understand pain points.
Needs Assessment. Ask open-ended questions to understand the underlying reasons behind the customer’s needs and challenges.
Solution Presentation. Explain how your product/service can address the root cause of the customer’s needs.
Handle Objections. Truthfully address any customer concerns or misunderstandings.
Close. Ask for the business.
Follow-up and Relationship Building. Ensure your brand promise is realized.
Lately, I have been talking with leaders in Advertising Agencies and Marketing Consultancy practices about how my Building Brands: What Really Matters book can be used in a consultative selling situation. The book can be used in step #2 to help uncover recognized and unrecognized pain points. Much like I used published clinical papers to initiate a conversation with physicians about antibiotic resistance, giving my book to customers can initiate a conversation on the most important steps in creating a successful brand. Many of these steps can be done better or are not being done at all. This is the conversation you had in step #3 with the customer, which leads right into step #4 when you present your product/service as a viable solution.
I highly recommend using third-party expert information in step #2. This will take some research, but facilitating a much more informative conversation with your customer can pay off. The template is [In this publication, an expert says the following…] followed by [ Is this consistent with your experience?]. Using expert information avoids putting yourself in a potentially negative situation because the worst-case scenario is the customer disagrees with the expert (which is far better than disagreeing with you).
I encourage you to try this model. I am highly confident you will find it both effective and comfortable as long as you have done a good job in step #1. If you are a consultant and choose to use any one of my three books as the “expert says,” give me some feedback on how well it worked. I love getting good news.