The Consultative Sales Process is a method of selling which requires the salesperson to ask a series of targeted discovery questions which allows the prospect to uncover for themselves the reasons they should buy. Consultative selling is very different from traditional transactional selling as the conversation is customer-focused and on diagnosing problems, not trying to sell.
The Consultative Sales Process is important because traditional sales techniques have become less effective and buyers no longer want Salespeople to try and sell to them.
Buyers prefer Salespeople who are experts and show an interest in them by asking targeted and relevant questions.
hen you have an appointment with your Doctor, 95% of the appointment is spent diagnosing the problems and only 5% of the time on the solution. Consultative Selling is the same in that, 95% of the sales meeting is spent using questioning and critical thinking to accurately diagnose the prospects business pain. This is the opposite of Traditional Sales techniques where the Sales Rep spends 95% of the time discussing their products and their services, in an attempt to sell.
This client-centred approach is counter-intuitive as most salespeople struggle to stop themselves trying to sell, and stop themselves talking about their products and services. Modern buyers are smarter and better educated than ever before and the Traditional Sales approach of getting in front of someone and pitching your Features & Benefits is not only outdated, but it is also off-putting to the modern buyer.
Furthermore old school sales closing techniques are obvious to the modern buyer, and they have developed well-drilled stalls and objections to counter them, leaving the traditional Sales Rep largely ineffective.
In modern selling the more you try and sell anything to anyone the more unsuccessful you will be. The key to sales success is not going out to sell, but simply going out and having the right type of conversation, with the right people, in a structured and repeatable way.
Having conversations focused on a buyer’s needs and wants is much more powerful than turning up with a PowerPoint presentation, as people hate to be sold to, but love to buy. The role of the Consultative Sales Professional is to simply facilitate the right conditions for the buyer to buy.
Salespeople who have never been trained in traditional techniques naturally default to the more traditional sales approach, as they believe they have to convince people to buy. Trying to convince anyone to buy is not nearly as powerful as the prospect convincing themselves to buy as they do with a Consultative Selling Process.
The roots of the modern Consultative Sales process lie in 470BC with the classical Greek philosopher Socrates who developed an educational method based on asking questions that became known as Socratic Questioning.
According to a student of Socrates, Plato, Socratic Questioning was “a disciplined practice of thoughtful questioning”, a form of critical thinking using discovery questions that allowed the students to question and explore their thoughts and complex ideas.
Consultative Selling is a disciplined practice of exploring and questioning the complex business issues and challenges that the sales prospect may be experiencing.
The advantages of the Consultative Selling Process are that the fundamental principles can be used on any product or service, in any industry.
Even a traditional telephone sales call or social media interaction can be approached in a consultative sales manner.
The flexibility combined with the maturing of sales teams has resulted in a shift over the years by companies who had previously been using a more traditional Transactional Sales Methodology, who have moved, or at least try to move, into a more Consultative Selling approach.
The Consultative Sales approach requires people skills and Emotional Intelligence that makes the Consultant much more than a Trusted Advisor, as they develop their conversations into deeper than normal relationships.
Consultative Selling Skills are used by many organisations in different industries primarily with a complex sales process and can be difficult to master.
Consultative sales training will set your team up for long term success and position them as though leaders and trusted advisors within their industry.
Consultative Sales Approach Steps
What are the symptoms of the business pain (problem) the prospect is experiencing?
Ask questions to diagnose the underlying causes of the pain.
Ask how the pain is impacting the business in terms of growth, profitability, morale or performance.
Ask how much the problem will cost the business if they don’t fix it.
Lastly ask how the problem affects the prospect personally – how do they feel about it.
At this stage, many prospects have come to the realisation that there is a “good fit” between what they need and what you do so they are often happy to move to go move forward. Going forward does not necessarily mean providing a purchase order it simply means moving forward to what the next clear step was that should have been agreed before the meeting.
In complex solution sales, this 5 step process may have to be repeated multiple times as you move through the prospects buying process and talk with different departments and stakeholders.
Emotional Intelligence (EI) refers to our ability to perceive, control, and evaluate emotions. As people buy emotionally we need to be able to read and understand those emotions and respond where appropriate.
Expertise means having a high level of skill and knowledge of your chosen product or service. The knowledge should never be used to bombard Decision-makers but instead used to create powerful and insightful questions. People prefer to deal with Experts and all things being equal the expert will always win over the generalist.
Self-awareness is our ability to notice, understand and manage our thoughts and feelings in terms of why we feel, what we feel and why we behave in a particular way. As an example, if you have ever talked to a prospect and felt like you couldn’t wait for the prospect to stop talking so you could talk. In those moments where you are waiting to jump into the conversation, you are not truly listening. It’s always better to pause and think before you respond and never interrupt the prospect.
Domain Knowledge refers to the specialised knowledge a salesperson has of the whole domain. It’s no longer enough to only know your customer, you must know and understand your customers’ customer. Knowing the wants and needs of your customers, customers put you in a better position to help your customer, sell, service and support their customers.
Active listening is the skill of using body language to demonstrate not only that we are listening, but that we are mentally and emotionally engaged. Mentally engaged means that our body language demonstrates that we are “present” and focussed on the prospect and the conversation and not distracted in any way. Emotionally engaged means that our body language represents the appropriate emotion whilst the prospect is talking. This could be interest, excitement, confusion or empathy. As body language can represent up to 57% of communication active listening is an import skill for every sales team.
Most salespeople believe they miss orders by miles, when in reality it takes very little to lose the sale.
When the kitchen re-modelling salesperson visits the buyer at home and parks on the buyers’ driveway; it’s over. It’s over because when you come home from a hard day’s work do you want to find someone else’s car on your drive, forcing you to park down the street?
When the software Sales Rep talks so much techno-babble and uses buzzwords the non-technical buyer switches off, it’s over.
When the pensions & investment salesperson turns up 45 minutes late for the interview for a $150,000 per annum job because he slept in it’s over.
All these are true stories shared to us by Business Leaders. It only takes the smallest of mistakes to lose a deal, but the good news then is, it can only take the smallest of things to help you win the sale. By using a consultative approach which is truly focussed on the prospect this alone can often be the small difference that separates sales reps from those using the traditional approach.
The Consultative Sales Approach includes advanced questioning skills that go beyond the traditional Open & Closed questions. They use techniques that include types of questions such as Redirect, Presumptive, Summary, Funneling, Opposing and Presumptive that are much more powerful.
In order for there to be any form of qualified sales opportunity there needs to be a gap between where the prospect is currently and where they desire to be after the successful implementation of your solution. No gap means no sale. We use questions to discover if there is a gap in a structured order.
Whilst it’s important to ask open ended questions, these are much more impactful. These questions are designed in a way to funnel the prospect to the pain points that are most relevant and help the prospect themselves understand the impact of the pain points.
| Question Types | Definition |
|---|---|
| Open end questions / Closed questions | Open questions are used to gather further information and closed questions should be used for confirmation Example: “Charlie people often tell me that they just want the cheapest insurance but they are concerned that inexpensive policies won’t provide the level of cover they are looking for. How do you evaluate the Risk attached to a cheaper policy?” |
| Summary Questions | Summary questions are used to confirm you have correctly understood what the prospect has said. This is done by summarising or paraphrasing the prospects statement and adding a conformation question at the end. Example: “Can I just recap to make sure I have got this right? You are saying you have a problem with x which is negatively impacting Y and this is costing you Z. Is that right?” |
| Funneling Questions | Funneling questions are used to channel the sales conversation towards a particular area or topic. Example: “I think we’re both now agreed on what the root cause of the problems are, is it worth spending some time about how this is impacting the business?” This moves the prospect from Step 2 to Step 3 in the process. |
| Redirect Questions | Redirect questions are used to control the conversation and keep the prospect from moving forward in the sales process if the Salesperson is not yet ready to move forward. Example: If the prospect asks “How much does this cost?” but you haven’t yet discussed Root Cause of the problems, the business impact or the financial impact you could say. “That’s a great question and at this stage I’m not even sure if we can help you. Would it make sense if you tell me a bit more about why you think you’re having problems with xyz?” |
| Opposing Redirect | Opposing redirect question is answering a question with the opposite response that would be expected by the prospect and turning it into a question. Example: Prospect – Your prices are high! Salesperson – Absolutely, but why do you think all our customers are happy to pay that? |
| Presumptive Questions | Presumptive questions are questions used when we know or presume the prospect does not know the answer. Example: When your current telecoms provider reviewed your account to look for savings what did they come up with? This question is used to position yourself as you know the existing supplier does not do this but it would be a benefit to the prospect if they did. |
The information gathered is fed back into the solution forming phase of the conversation which allows the buyer to take ownership of the final solution.
Consultative Sales Training Courses lasting one and two days are available from a specialist training providers like ourselves. The courses will cover the main topics such as social media, building trust, advanced questioning techniques, the consultative sales model and understanding people.
We also run Bespoke Sales Training courses In-house where we overlay the principles of Consultative Selling to your own business processes.
You can read more about Consultative Sales Training in the course guide.
Whilst training is important often Salespeople need support and reinforcement outside of training.
Coaching should be used to support the practical application of the knowledge passed on during training.
Consultative sales coaching provides the support that Salespeople need to make the adjustment from a more traditional sales approach to a consultative one.
Often the biggest problem Sales Reps face is remembering what questions to ask when they get in-front of prospects.
So we put together a simple one page sheet that contains the most important questions to use as a visual prompt and allows Salespeople to ask the questions and take notes.
You can see how we use the Meeting Notes templates and integrate it into our Consultative Sales Coaching in Using OneNote for Sales Management.
You can read more about and download all the FREE tools templates and guides mentioned in this article via our Sales Tools page.
You can learn more about Selling Value in our article How to Sell Value Not Price.
Iain Swanston has spent over 30 years in B2B sales selling, training and leading teams both domestically and internationally. In addition he serves as an Associate at Strathclyde University Business School where he has delivered the sales content for the Masters in Entrepreneurship since 2015.
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