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Consultative Selling: How to build deeper, personalized relationships with prospects

Consultative selling is a philosophy rooted in building a relationship between you and your prospects, by asking questions, listening to their needs and personalizing your product or service to them. A salesperson who practices consultative selling develops a holistic and nuanced understanding of the buyer’s needs, and then they try to fulfill those needs with a customized solution.

Why should you practice consultative selling instead of product-based selling? Because good sales is all about relationships. Building lasting, meaningful relationships with your customers is the best way for your company to survive in the competitive sales industry.

This in-depth guide to mastering consultative selling digs deep into the following:

Read on for a clear, concise consultative selling definition, some consultative selling examples and how you can use it to drive more sales.

What is consultative selling?

Consultative selling is defined as putting your relationship with your customer first, worrying about selling them your product afterward.

At its core, the consultative approach focuses on your customer, their needs and their biggest pain points before you even think about offering up a product or service as a solution. This builds a trusting customer relationship that helps you close deals and win repeat customers, even if it might take a little longer than getting right to the point.

The history of consultative sales

But how long has the consultative selling approach to sales been around? Longer than you might think. It was first floated as a sales technique during the 1970s in Mack Hanan’s book “ Consultative Selling: The Hanan Formula for High-Margin Sales at High Levels ” and slowly gained traction in the sales industry.

However, consultative selling was considered to be a long, drawn-out process, rather than a way to build strategic relationships.

Reps struggled to see the value of putting in the effort to build meaningful relationships with customers. So, the approach was lost in a sea of pushy sales tactics .

If you take a step back, though, consultative selling makes sense. It helps a consultative salesperson qualify prospects faster while tailoring a product solution to match their specific needs. Not to mention reducing customer churn in the long run.

Why consultative selling works

It can’t be expressed enough: sales is about building relationships. Therefore, using a sales process that values a trustworthy relationship with your clients above making quick sales makes logical sense.

The alarming reality is, B2B customers are becoming disengaged with their companies. A study by Gartner found customers are increasingly becoming skeptical of the information reps give them . This lack of trust leads to low buying confidence. To combat that, sales reps need to enhance how they are perceived by their customers, which boils down to: “Do they believe I’m trying to sell them something that will actually fix their problems?”

Another positive aspect of consultative selling is that it lends itself to “value-added selling.” A sales rep that approaches prospects with a consultative selling mindset will naturally know more about what the customer is looking for than a rep who uses the traditional sales method, which is going straight for a hard sell.

In short, the time you and your sales team put into consultative selling will pay off in the long-run because this sales methodology values customer relationships. While using customer relationship management software (CRM) automates some of that work, you still need to build the concept of quality relationships into your sales strategy and sales training yourself.

Consultative selling vs. product-based selling

Despite the benefits of being able to tailor solutions to prospects, consultative sales is a very different beast to product-based selling. Here are a few product-based selling and consultative selling examples:

When purchasing a product, buyers now look for a level of trust in the salesperson before they are willing to spend any money. The more you earn that trust, the more likely you’ll land the sale.

Buyers are swamped with options and information when it comes to products and services, and trust in brands is low. Only 58% of consumers trust businesses, according to the latest Edelman Trust Barometer .

Sales reps should put their customers first and products second if they want to reap the rewards.

So, how can a sales professional start using a consultative sales approach? Here’s our four-step guide to the consultative sales process .

Four Steps to Finding the Right Leads Fast

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Step one: Positioning yourself as a trusted authority

To build up the all-important trust with a prospect, they need to know that you practice what you preach.

This means becoming a trusted authority in your field.

To be a trusted authority, you must not only have the ability to confidently serve your prospect, but your co-workers and company, too. You must be an authoritative figure, not just act like one.

In the eyes of your prospect, you need to go from a salesperson to an expert. Here’s how to control that messaging:

1. Have evidence to back up what you say

You must be able to back everything you say to your prospects with evidence if you want to earn trust and gain a competitive advantage.

Whether this is during a consultative sales call or within your sales enablement content, make sure you always have evidence to back up any ideas or claims you’re making. If you’re claiming to have 10,000 happy customers on your website, have some testimonials ready in your sales pitch to back this figure up.

Part of building yourself as a trusted authority is becoming an expert in your chosen field. Pick a niche that focuses on your ideal clients and their needs. If you’re selling a content creation service, don’t add social media marketing into the mix. Just focus on mastering content creation and becoming a leading expert in your industry. Focus on optimization in your chosen field.

Not sure if you’re nailing your niche? Ask yourself:

• Is there a gap that needs filling in the industry?
• When it comes to my clients, what is their biggest pain point or challenge they want to overcome?
• What are the unique skills that I can offer my customers for their benefit?
• What problems and pain points did my previous clients share, and how did I solve them?

Answering and conquering these questions can help you to position yourself as a problem solver in your chosen industry.

2. Don’t hide from criticism

It doesn’t matter how amazing your product or service is. Sooner or later, you’re going to receive criticism and you should take it as a chance to improve.

When building yourself up as a trusted authority, it’s how you deal with that criticism that matters. Instead of hiding from it, respond to the comments thrown at you. Use the process to become a better salesperson.

Don’t respond negatively to the haters. Avoid having the last word when talking to an unhappy customer. Responding to criticism is all about showing the public that you’re taking everyone’s opinions on board and that you care enough to respond to each and every customer.

You’re never going to make everyone happy. But showing your customers that you’re trying will go a long way to build your authority.

3. Create killer content and provide real value

Creating valuable content for your audience will build trust.

But content creation is a long-term game. Don’t write a blog post and expect leads to come flocking to your website. It can take months or years to build up enough quality content that you start to be looked at as a trusted figure.

So how do you build trust through content? By creating content regularly, ensuring it aligns with your business’s value proposition, pushing it on your social media profiles over time and making sure your content delivers value to your prospect.

The content you put out to the world will ultimately depend on your industry (and what your end goal of content creation is). But you must aim to make content digestible as well as shareable.

Some of the best ways to provide value through content are through:

• High-quality blog posts
• Shareable infographics
• Case studies and whitepapers

For example, Gaetano DiNardi from Nextiva uses LinkedIn to provide his audience with relevant, valuable content. Even when he’s not selling to them:

You don’t have to create content to gain the trust of your customers; curating content can help you become more influential as well.

Don’t shy away from sharing stories and information that will help your target audience overcome relevant challenges, as it will show your target audience that you know what you’re talking about, encouraging them to enter your sales funnel and become qualified leads .

Giving away free, high-value content is one of the best ways to gain traction amongst those who otherwise wouldn’t have thought to pay for your products or services. And even if they’re still not willing to pay for your services, they may recommend you to people who are.

Step two: How to conduct in-depth prospect research

The next step to refining a successful consultative selling technique is conducting in-depth prospect research. The goal here is to uncover as much information about the target account and prospect as possible, and have that information ready in your sales dashboard . Researching prospects before contacting them can be the difference in landing a new client and never having your phone calls returned. Without any research on your part your prospect will feel you don’t understand their needs at all.

To avoid this, uncover key information about your prospect. This information includes:

• The size of the prospect’s company
• Number of employees
• Their average sale size or annual turnover
• Their typical product or service offering
• Their target market

Go into “detective mode.” Look for in-depth information that will shed light on the problems your prospect’s face in their role and organization. Search for news or current event publications that mention their company and use this to form a comprehensive understanding of your client’s current state.

Who are their competitors? What content are they publishing, and have they established themselves as an authority? Are they utilizing their social media channels?

The majority of salespeople won’t make this amount of effort. By spending an extra 10-30 minutes researching your prospect, you’ve already given yourself the upper hand.

Figuring out how to frame prospect conversations takes more than just knowing the simple stuff, like the size of their company, you need to dig deeper and find out what makes them tick.

The best way to do this is to utilize sales prospecting tools that are built to maximize efficiency and boost lead generation . The right prospecting tool can take you so much further than your prospect’s LinkedIn profile.

Conducting in-depth research goes beyond your prospect’s mindset. You need to know how they’re interacting with your product, and if they are the key decision maker.

Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the best tools for prospect research that you can integrate with your CRM and other sales tools:

For better cold calling: CallRoot

With CallRoot, you can work out which campaign (online/offline) or keyword is generating the most sales calls. You can also track & record incoming phone calls, dynamically insert tracking phone numbers and find the source of every incoming phone call. The tool is one that can boost all your cold calling efforts, not just when using a consultative selling approach.

For building meaningful relationships: Triggerbee

Track visitors to your website in real-time, see where they came from and accrue data to find out if they could potentially become a lead with Triggerbee.

Triggerbee combines three great features for prospectors:

• Website analytics so you can capture the behavior and interest of prospects
• Forms, or widgets, that collect visitor data and display relevant offers and content to specific prospects
• Integrations with other tools like Pipedrive and Mailchimp

For reaching key stakeholders: Sellscope

Lead databases go out of date very quickly, so to get high-quality data you often need to do a lot of research yourself, which is time-consuming. Find tools that help you automate wherever you can.

Instead, identify key decision makers with Sellscope, a company that provides you with a team of specialized researchers who build, define and segment lead databases.

As well as enriching the data of the leads in your list, Sellscope can also identify other companies that could fit the bill.

For more great prospecting tools, read our article on the best lead generation apps that will integrate with your CMS .

Connect with prospects through social selling

Social selling is quickly becoming the go-to method for connecting with prospects. In fact, salespeople that leverage social selling create 45% more opportunities than their team members.

That means if you’re ignoring social media, there’s a chance you’re missing out on a big chunk of potential customers too.

Social selling involves creating content for a defined target market and then building relationships from inside a social platform. Building a relationship through social selling has a lot of moving parts; a company needs to be constantly listening for mentions on social platforms and interacting with customers to be successful.

Contacting customers who have already interacted with your content helps you begin the sales process with companies or web visitors who are interested in your product or service.

You should use LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram to engage with prospects. These are some of the most powerful social platforms where you can share relevant content, engage prospects, build rapport and encourage them to begin their customer journey with your sales pipeline .

Social selling works because it focuses on building relationships first and selling later; social platforms give reps a platform to have conversations with prospects while promoting their own content at the same time.

Want to Learn How to Influence Your Prospect’s Buying Decisions?

Step three: leading the conversation.

No two interactions with a prospect are the same. To be successful in consultative sales, you need to find the sweet spot between leading a conversation while drawing out key information from your prospect.

That’s why, when talking to a prospect, it’s important to ask the right questions at the right time (while coming up with a solution that fits). Before even bringing up pricing or too many details about your product, remember to focus on solutions to their problems first and foremost.

During these conversations, prospects need to be heard. Being pushy in a conversation or not offering help to a prospect when you initially approach them can quickly kill your chances of closing a deal.

Always lead a conversation with a prospect by asking questions, lots of them. Understanding a customer’s needs is crucial in a consultative selling approach, and asking the right questions is the only way to get a glimpse of how to solve their problems.

Before you make that call or meet with a prospect, formulate a list of generic questions you can use to start the conversation and, if necessary, fall back on. At the same time, you must be ready to think on your feet and ask questions tailored to the prospects’ response.

Start with the simple stuff:

• Is your prospect happy with their current vendor?
• What is the biggest challenge in their business right now?
• Have they shown interest in learning more about your product?
• Is there a genuine need for your product?
• Is your product within their price range?

Think up a list of your own investigative questions that, when answered, could lead to another line of conversation.

For example, if you ask your prospect what their biggest challenge as a business is, and they answer with something that can’t be fixed by your product, that’s fine. Use it as a way to find out more about their company and make the most out of the opportunity to connect with your prospect by lending them a listening ear. If your product does offer a solution, use this as a chance to subtly highlight that.

In fact, top performers are asking their prospects questions more often than others when it comes to figuring out if their product is a good fit for their problems.

Make sure you ask questions that show you have a genuine interest in their business, and a desire to understand their problems.

Eventually, you’ll be able to question your prospect on what they want to achieve with your product. You can then turn the conversation around into building them a tailored solution.

Step four: Building a tailored solution

The last step to honing your consultative selling technique is giving your prospect a tailored solution to their problem. A solution that’s built just for them.

Let’s be real: the biggest challenge reps face is (usually) closing more deals. But remember, your prospect doesn’t care about your problems, they’ve got their own to take care of. Make sure you focus on their problems rather than your own.

Building a tailored solution for your prospect is a three-part process:

1. Fully understand your prospect’s needs

All your prospect wants is to be understood, they don’t care about your sales objectives

Let’s say you’re trying to close a marketing deal with a prospective client. If a prospect has repeatedly said their Head of Marketing is keen to increase conversions on their website, it should become your focus.

In your pitch, focus on how you can help your prospect lift conversion rates, and measure them successfully so they can show the rest of their team. This will help them to see their problem will be solved with a tailored solution.

2. Immerse yourself in their pain points

Prospects rarely make buying decisions based on facts. They’re much more likely to buy a product based on emotion, especially when it comes to closing B2B deals.

Here are a few sales stats from our 2021 Sales Stats Report that bring this home:

Only 23% of buyers agree that sellers “always” put their needs first (source: The LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2021)

51% of companies think that sales reps need to improve their ability to identify behavior from a buyer that indicates they want to make a purchase (source: Sales Performance Optimization Study, CSO Insights)

If you can position your product to give them personal value and tap into the emotions behind their buying decisions, it will be worth double the value to the prospect.

Aim to connect with your prospect about how they feel in their role, and weave your product into the conversation. The overall goal in doing this is to show them that you can help them shine in front of their colleagues (and their boss).

Let’s take the prospect with the marketing deal. He wants to increase sales conversions, but he also wants his Head of Marketing to get off his back. Talk to him about how your solution to his problem will not only solve his conversion problems, but how it’ll make him look like a hero in front of his boss, too. You’ve created a win-win situation.

3. Show your product in action

This part of the plan is about putting the buying decision purely in your prospect’s hands.

Closing a pitch shouldn’t be a case of rattling off a list of product or service features and crossing your fingers that your prospect will come on board. You need to give your prospects the chance to experience your solution themselves and then make a decision in their own time.

For example, to win over the prospect who wants to look good in front of their Head of Marketing, show them some relevant results instead of just listing your product features.

Use a relevant case study that solved similar pain points, such as creating increased conversions and more website traffic. Present your evidence through screenshots or analytics charts to demonstrate you can solve the prospect’s pain point.

By doing your homework in the lead up to closing a deal , you’re more likely to hit a home run.

The five principles of consultative selling: A real-world example

Let’s start off with a real-world sales tale.

A few years ago, Lou Diamond, president and CEO of the salesperson development firm FOBIA, was conducting a workshop for some Merrill Lynch financial advisors.

The workshop’s objective was to help the advisors develop an effective consultative selling approach. During the role-playing part of the workshop (a strategy you can use to great effect in your own sales meetings ), one of the advisors made a significant breakthrough.

This particular advisor was struggling to win the business of an elderly woman, whose husband recently died.

Although she was quite wealthy, she had never taken any steps to manage her finances. The advisor had met with the woman numerous times. He tried, again and again, to make her understand that if she did not take action soon, her children would be left with a huge financial burden.

So Diamond asked the advisor to pretend one of his colleagues was the elderly woman and demo a conversation. The two went back and forth, and after failing to reason with his colleague, the advisor finally reached a boiling point, got to his feet, and said: “Don’t you see? I care more about your money than you do!”

“The whole room went, ‘Wow,’” Diamond said. “It was so powerful. He not only said it, he believed it.”

Developing an effective consultative selling approach relies on certain sales skills, techniques and best practices. But one defining characteristic of a good consultative seller is authenticity, a fact which Diamond reaffirmed that day at Merrill Lynch.

“To be a good consultative seller,” Diamond said, “you need to be coming from who you are first, then making it all about them.”

1. Research

Whether we’re sifting through ancient documents, scanning Yelp reviews or reading a potential customer’s LinkedIn profile, research helps us shift the chances of success in our favor.

Before initiating contact with potential customers, it’s wise to devote ample time to researching them and their business.

Part of that research is lead qualification . Is this person interested in my product? Do they have the authority and the budget to make a purchasing decision?

Another part is competitive research. Which products other than yours might the buyer be considering? What do those products have that yours doesn’t? What does yours have that theirs doesn’t?

Proper research means becoming an expert in the buyer’s business. It means anticipating any and all questions the buyer may ask. It means entering the conversation with every conceivable answer at the ready.

Think of your product or service as puzzle pieces. Every piece is accounted for and if put together correctly, they will form a complete image.

There’s just one problem: You don’t have the box with the image on it.

But the buyer does, and for you to understand how all the pieces fit together, the buyer needs to show it to you. And they will, bit by bit, if you ask the right questions.

Asking may sound simple, but the simplest things are often the hardest to get right. This is because the first instinct of many salespeople is to come charging out of the gate with a sheetload of talking points.

To build a real relationship, one that will eventually reveal the image on the puzzle box, restrain that instinct. Instead, let the client do the talking by asking them questions.

Ariana Amplo, co-founder of the investment consultant platform InHub , suggests you start the conversation by “asking basic and general questions, allowing whoever you’re asking to say what comes to mind first, rather than asking leading questions from the beginning. Then start asking specific questions.”

Let’s say you’re selling data backup and recovery software. Begin the conversation with a basic question, such as:

Can you walk me through your backup process? Then use their answer to drill into more detail. Do you backup daily? How much time do you spend on daily backups? What happens next? Are your backups completing properly? Have you ever lost any data? Did you lose business?

By starting with the basics and drilling into specifics, you can begin to frame your questions around what your solution does differently.

3. Listen (actively)

The better you are at asking questions, the less you’ll need to say, and the more listening you’ll need to do.

But truly understanding requires active listening, which helps you absorb what’s being said, and what’s not being said. An active listener can read the subtext of the conversation. They can pick up verbal and nonverbal cues to flesh out their understanding.

Furthermore, demonstrating to the buyer that you’re actively listening goes a long way in building trust. To borrow a phrase from Dale Carnegie, you should become “genuinely interested in whomever you’re speaking with.”

A large component of active listening is knowing when not to talk. Sure, you found the buyer, you researched them until the lights went out and the cleaning crew arrived, and you initiated a conversation, so you might feel you’ve earned the right to talk the buyer’s head off.

But the majority of that conversation should be spent actively listening, not talking. Leave the talking to the buyer. To graduate from traditional listening consider these active listening tips and techniques:

• Remove distractions (background noise, email checking, eating)
• Don’t simply wait to talk
• Never interrupt
• Act like the buyer is the only person in the world
• Show the buyer you’re listening by offering the occasional word of acknowledgment (“OK” … “Right” ... “Uh-huh”)
• Ask clarifying questions (sparingly), such as “Can you expand on this?” and “What do you mean by that?”
• Periodically paraphrase what the buyer said. For example: “If I’m understanding correctly, you’re saying …” and “What I’m hearing is that …”
• When a buyer stops talking, pause for a few seconds before responding
• Ask open-ended questions rather than questions that can be answered “yes” or “no”
• If the client is having trouble explaining something, give them time to figure it out rather than cutting them off with your own suggestion

Also, listen out for the buyer’s values. Do they put particular importance on their team’s welfare, or are they more concerned about themselves? Do they value low cost over high quality, or vice versa?

If you practice active listening, you will have learned much, but said little.

How to Use Consultative Selling to Close

So you’ve done your research, you’ve built a relationship, you’ve listened. Now, how do you close? Let’s look at the two final steps in the consultative selling process that drive the sale home:

1. Communicate Your “Reason Why”

In a moment of frustration, the Merrill Lynch salesman from Diamond’s workshop made a breakthrough by saying, “I care more about your money than you do!”

This outburst was his “reason why.” The financial security of this woman and her family mattered to him. He wanted to help them, in earnest, and grew impatient when she didn’t seem to grasp his intentions.

Communicating your “reason why” requires a soft touch. Rather than stating your reasoning outright, let it color the conversation; be enthusiastic and empathetic; don’t be afraid to challenge the buyer over something you truly believe in; be authentic.

No one wants to do business with a two-dimensional “salesbot.” They want to do business with a real person.

2. Follow up

Closing a deal doesn’t usually happen all at once. The buyer may need to bring your solution to his or her team for input. They may need to have a conversation with their CEO to determine if your solution is in line with their business strategy.

This can take time, so part of following up involves helping the buyer work out the finer points. Patience is the key.

Rushing a buyer can quickly end your relationship. However, it’s imperative that you stay top-of-mind.

“It’s not only doing calls well, it’s the follow-up ,” Amplo says. “It’s taking what was said in the initial conversation and using your consultative selling skills until they close.”

If you asked good questions, actively listened and took comprehensive notes during the initial conversation, following up will be a matter of translating the information gathered into top-of-mind opportunities.

For example, if a week goes by with no word from the buyer, consider sending them an article that ties in with something they said when you last spoke. If another week goes by, send them something else.

Always be thinking about how to build on the initial contact. What will interest them? What will entertain them? What will help them? And, perhaps most importantly, what is relevant to them?

If a few weeks go by and still no word, Amplo suggests emailing the buyer with a question, such as:

• “What is your timeline?”
• “Do you need anything else?”
• “Are other decision makers involved?”
• “Can you jump on a 10-minute call?”

Go forth and consult

With the principles of consultative selling fresh on the brain, it’s time to hit the phones and focus on forming a bond rather than pitching.

Consultative selling summed up

To nail consultative selling, you need to work hard to understand the buyer’s unique needs and objectives. This is done through in-depth research, listening without hard-selling and building an authentic, personalized relationship.

Using tools to conduct prospect research and using automation where you can will be extremely helpful in consultative selling, but your biggest challenge will be keeping the seller-buyer relationship to be authentic. Constantly remind yourself that the pitch is about making your prospect happy, and not about adding a sale to your bottom line.

Offer your lead a tailored solution and help them envisage themselves as being a hero in their office. By flipping the focus onto your prospect’s emotions and pain points , their decision to invest in your company will be a no-brainer.

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Everything You Need to Know About Consultative Selling

Outbound sales

What Is Consultative Selling?

Consultative selling is a sales approach that prioritizes relationship building and open dialogue to address a customer’s needs. Conversation is focused on the customer’s challenges and goals, rather than the product’s features. By understanding the challenges faced by customers, sellers can position their products as tailored solutions. Using a consultative approach can lead to increased satisfaction and stronger buyer-seller relationships.

The Consultative Selling Framework

The Consultative Selling Framework provides sellers with a consistent, repeatable process to execute sales conversations more effectively.

The Framework consists of 6 steps prepare, connect, understand, recommend, commit, and act.

In the next section, we'll explore each of these steps in more detail.

Research your prospect’s role, as well as common challenges in their industry and recent changes at their company, to plan for a productive and engaging meeting.

Check out our suite of sales tools that help embed best practices, like call preparation, into your sales team's workflow.

Use rapport-building skills to set a positive tone for the meeting and build trust to ensure the buyer is comfortable sharing critical information.

3. Understand

Use questioning skills  to develop a deep understanding of the buyer's needs.

4. Recommend

Formulate a value statement that draws clear connections between the customer's challenges and the proposed solution using straightforward language.

Use process-focused communication to start closing. This step is often repeated as new stakeholders enter the conversation and the details of the solution and contract are finalized. At this stage, sellers should use agile sales techniques to get the deal over the finish line.

Maintain flawless follow-up with the customer to boost credibility and build momentum toward the final close.

Watch the video below to take an even deeper dive into the 6 elements of the consultative selling framework.

Understanding Customer Needs in Consultative Selling

One of the core tenants of consultative selling is: a sales professional must use authentic curiosity to deeply understand customer needs.

Some examples of consultative-style questions that demonstrate genuine curiosity are:

• What do you want to achieve?
• What are your current methods?
• What’s working well?
• To ensure that we are future-focused in our recommendations, what are your plans going forward?

The answers to these questions provide vital insights into the customer’s challenges. Following the consultative sales process improves the seller’s ability to resolve objections  and position solutions to advance the sale.

RELATED: Watch examples of the right and wrong ways to solve sales objections here.

Consultative Sales Skills and Techniques

In consultative selling, the sales professional learns about customer needs before talking about a product or solution. Product knowledge is transformed into a tailored solution that is positioned based on the customer’s needs.

For successful consultative selling discussions, focusing on avoiding being seller-centric, embracing authenticity, leading the conversation with a plan, building decisive momentum, leveraging insights through questioning, understanding the buyer's behavioral psychology, and working from facts not assumptions.

In the next section, we explore these 7 key behaviors in greater detail.

1. Avoid Being Seller-centric

Many sellers believe they’re customer-focused, but few truly are. Sales professionals facing pressure to close often resort to seller-centric behaviors to try to strong-arm customers or gloss over concerns. However, these behaviors erode trust.

Sellers need to understand the person in the other chair. Doing so means forming an accurate diagnosis of their problem. This insight improves the seller's ability to effectively position solutions and build trust with the customer.

2. Embrace Authenticity

Sales professionals must give before they get. Prioritize solving the buyer’s business challenges early in the process to foster openness.

This openness helps sellers more accurately diagnose their buyer’s challenges, stated needs, and unknown needs. Using this information, the seller can show the buyer the right data to reach a resolution.

3. Lead the Conversation with a Plan

A direct approach that starts the conversation with a clear intent helps sellers gain an early indication of the buyer’s expectations. If the intended path isn’t aligned with the buyer’s goals for the conversation, the seller can adjust accordingly.

4. Build Decisive Momentum

Sales professionals can guide the buyer through the dialogue by eliciting feedback. This helps them get a sense of how well they understand the solutions and ideas discussed.

This periodic checking develops commitment incrementally throughout the buying process. It also builds decisive momentum in which alignment with the buyer makes each successive decision easier than the last.

5. Leverage Insights through Questioning

Asking progressively smarter questions helps the buyer connect the dots with a line that traces to the best solution.

Insightful questions quickly get to the core issues and enable the seller to float ideas. Buyers will be more open to thinking differently about solutions when the concepts are presented as questions.

6. Understand Buyer Behavioral Psychology

Buyers are human beings, and human beings have three fundamental needs for well-being that affect how they perceive what is happening, what they listen to, and how they ultimately make decisions.

These needs are Autonomy, Competence, and Relatedness. Strong questioning skills help sellers respect these needs by staying emotionally connected with the buyer, avoiding coming across as manipulative, and creating a safe environment to discuss challenging or sensitive issues.

7. Work from Facts, Not Assumptions

Anchoring is a form of cognitive bias where a person relies too heavily on one piece of information. Inexperienced sellers usually anchor to their own assumptions rather than seeking out the facts through dialogue.

Anchors can cause sales professionals to miss valuable information that could advance the sales process by positioning a more compelling solution.

To counteract anchoring, the best sellers use active listening to “tune into” new or conflicting information. They aren’t afraid to ask tough questions because they know that the facts will lead to the most compelling value proposition.

RELATED: Learn how to practice these critical behaviors through role-play exercises for consultative sales.

Benefits of Adopting a Consultative Selling Approach

In sales, "consultative" and "solution" are often overused terms. However, t rue solutions require a consultative approach . Without being consultative, the so-called solution is usually little more than a standard product pitch.

Sales professionals who genuinely embrace the consultative approach experience many benefits, including:

• Increased revenue from improved close rates and customer expansion
• Competitive advantage from a market-aligned sales approach
• Uncovered opportunities within current accounts from surfacing unrecognized needs
• Shortened sales cycles by driving momentum and building buyer confidence to commit

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Why the Consultative Approach is Better for Modern Buyers

Market changes drove the shift from product-focused to needs-focused selling. Modern buyers:  

• Are more informed
• Are more skeptical
• Must answer to an increasing number of stakeholders
• Face more complexity and ambiguity in their roles
• Are less loyal to their existing solutions providers

Technology, skepticism, risk-averseness, and numerous stakeholders challenge the seller-buyer connection and prolong the sales cycle . This problem is further compounded by sellers underestimating buyers' level of research, as well as limited access to buyers amid tight schedules.

While these factors seemingly raise the buyer to an unreachable height, sellers must remember they offer their own critical skills . Buyers still seek trust, authenticity, and clarity to help them synthesize value from their resources. Sellers can differentiate themselves by delivering on these needs.

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The Consultative Selling Presentation

By Richard G. McNeill

March 25, 2000

Introduction

A Brief History of Selling in the United States

            The selling presentation has changed over the years.   The changes are a reflection of the nature of the economy and underlying theories of how people buy.   The following periods in the United States witnessed different approaches to selling and selling presentations:

1.           Agrarian Age – Distant past to Approximately 1850

2.          Early Industrial Age– 1850 to 1920

3.          Mature Industrial Age – 1920 to 1950

4.          Post-Industrial Age – 1950 to 1980

5.          Information Age – 1980 to Present

           Agrarian Age. Before 1850 and the generally accepted beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, salespeople were still “peddlers” who traveled through the predominantly east coast US selling goods from horseback and wagons.   The selling presentation was based on self-learned skills of these itinerant traveling salespeople.   There were no major efforts to study the art of selling.

            Early Industrial Age. After 1850, the economy of the United States began to shift from an agrarian economy to industrial.   With the rise of manufacturing, the spreading population to the western United States and the linking of the east and west coast by railroad in 1869, salespeople became of increasing importance to the economy.   During this period, owners of factories began to shape the army of salespeople from a loose network of “peddlers” to a more organized selling force.   For example around 1850, Cyrus McCormick (the inventor of the wheat reaper & thresher) is credited in organizing a national network of selling agents who operated on stricter selling controls than the peddlers of the past.   As time went on, manufacturers such as Gillette, Eli Lilly, Scovill, and others began to hire salespeople specifically to represent one company.   This was a dramatic change from the past.  

            From 1910 to 1920, as selling and salespeople became more important to the economy, there was a growing interest in improving the selling process.   Psychology, notably Freud and Jung, essentially founded the discipline during this period.   As appertaining to the art of selling, many of the new psychologists began to study the buying process.   They were interested in discovering the mental states that buyers went through so that salespeople could better influence the buying process.  

As early as 1911, psychologists were studying and describing the mental states that customers would exhibit as they proceeded through various phases of making a purchase (Sheldon, 19ll). Essentially, Sheldon observed that customers in making a purchase will pass through five stages: (a) Favorable attention, (b) Interest, (c) Desire, (d) Action, and (e) Permanent satisfaction.   This later evolved into what has been named, The Buyer Action Theory .

CLICK HERE TO REVISIT THIS THEORY .

Mature Industrial Age. Building upon earlier psychological observations, in 1922, Edward Kellogg Strong, Jr. wrote a book that would be the first attempt to translate the abstract psychological customer descriptions and observations into concrete techniques that could be used by salespeople. Essentially, Strong prescribed techniques that could be learned by salespeople to cause customers to enter the mental states that would lead to their making a purchase.   In other words, Strong believed that salespeople could learn to practice certain techniques and utter the right words that would induce people to buy.  

            In his book’s section called “The Tactics of Selling,”( Strong, 1922, pp. 351 – 465),   Strong talked about tactical selling techniques as a series of five steps.   He prescribed presentation techniques that if salespeople could make to cause the potential customer to enter each of the psychologically described buying mental states and, thus, would buy.   This approach is still being taught today and is prevalent in traditional “transactional selling.”  

Post-Industrial Age. Around 1950, selling and marketing made a tremendous leap forward.   Led by marketing researchers, the Marketing Concept was introduced to industry by academicians. The concept began its journey of   wide acceptance in sales and marketing theory.   The marketing concept is a customer focus as opposed to a seller or product focus.   Essentially, the selling practices as advocated by Strong in the 1920s were “seller-centric;” that is, they were focused on the various techniques that could be applied to the customer to induce or make them enter mental states which would lead to buying.   The marketing concept advocated that sellers start with customer needs and then try to satisfy these needs.   The marketing concept led to a new theory of buying called The Need-Satisfaction Buying Theory ( CLICK HERE TO REVISIT THIS THEORY ).

Customer Buying Theory

Steps of the Need-Satisfaction Buying Theory

            The Need-Satisfaction Buying Theory is the basis for “consultative selling.”   Essentially, sellers adopt the philosophy that they are consultants to help potential customers to solve need problems; the customer has a problem to be solved and the product/service has the potential benefits to solve the problem. This approach to selling is “customer-centric.”   The seller adds-value and is important to the buyer throughout the buying process.   The theory states that the buyer goes through the following steps to make a buying decision, especially a decision on complex and expensive products/services:

1.             Recognition of Needs – The value that a salesperson can add at this stage is the help customers recognize and define problems and needs in a new or different way.

2.             Evaluation of Options (Alternative products) – The value that a salesperson can add here is to show superior solutions, options, and approaches that customers may not have understood or considered.

3.             Resolution of Concerns (Decide on one of the alternative products)—Value here is created by the salesperson in helping customers to overcome and remove obstacles to acquisition.

4.             Purchase (Logistics of acquisition) – The value a salesperson can contribute here is to make the purchase painless, convenient, and hassle-free.

5.             Implementation – The salesperson adds value by showing customers how to install and use the product/service.

The Need-Satisfaction Buying Theory is the foundation to “consultative selling.”

Information Age. By 1980, the United States was “on the ropes” economically as they fought increasing global competition.   The “Toyota Phenomena” and the quality movement had invaded the US economy.   The US responded by copying the Japanese and other competing global companies.   With a proliferation of look-alike quality products, competition for customers began to shift to more abstract nuances to differentiate one product from another.   The salesperson, as well as his or her supporting company, became an important component of the product or service that the customer considered as value .   Additionally, the growing proliferation and availability of information (the Internet and Web) developed a generation of increasingly informed buyers.  

            In the past, salespeople were primarily providers of product/service information.   However, increased availability of information to buyers began to shift the salesperson’s primary roles.   Salespeople now had to reexamine who they were and why they existed.   While their traditional role of providing the means to make “transactional” sales was still important (there are still many products/services today requiring this approach), the legacy of the marketing concept and adding value within the Need-Satisfaction Buying Theory of the buying process became increasingly important.  

            Thus, for many commoditized (standardized and look-alike) products/services, potential customers are relatively sophisticated and have access to information. They do not need salespeople to make a buying decision.   And, selling, “transactional selling,” is taking place electronically.   However, for complex, customized products and services, salespeople need to add value during the buyer’ need-satisfaction buying process.   This is the growing role of sales in the future.   This is “consultative selling” and the theme of this article on selling presentations.

            NOTE: “Transactional Selling” and “Consultative Selling” exist side-by-side.   As a new approach evolves, it often retains some of the same language and form of an earlier approach.   This is the case of the following discussion of the “consultative selling” presentation.   Some of the language is similar, but the underlying philosophy and focus is different.

            The Consultative Selling Presentation is composed of two major phases:   Phase I is Presentation Planning and Phase II is the actual presentation and demonstration.

Phase I - Presentation Planning

Prepare a written presentation plan prior to the actual meeting with the prospect/customer.   Here you set your objectives for the presentation and develop a plan to implement the presentation.   You should consider several scenarios: worst case, best case, and most probable case.   You want to anticipate as much as possible; for example, the resistance you might meet (objections) and how you would negotiate them (handling objections). Your best preparation is to know everything possible about the prospect/customer and your product, and your competition. Additionally, you need to know a lot about the potential customer themselves.

In a Single-Meeting Presentation (where you have never met with the prospect previously), you must do the following at a minimum: (a) establish rapport, (b) discover needs, (c) match your product features/benefits with customer needs, and (d) close (either ask for the order or get commitment for the next action step).  

In a Multi-Meeting Presentation (the most common in complex product/service selling- Consultative Selling), you must accomplish the steps above, however you may have: (a) a first meeting (either scheduled or have contact in another social situation) devoted only to relationship building, (b) another meeting devoted to needs discovery, and (c) another devoted to the benefit/need presentation itself.   Multi-Meeting Presentations are characteristically used in selling group and convention business; a complex and expensive product/service.   The primary purpose of the Phase I is thorough preparation for the presentation. The thoroughness of your preparation will strengthen the relationship bond between buyer and seller (essential ingredient for consultative selling).

PHASE II - Presentation and Demonstration

General. The goal of a “consultative seller” is to first, establish a relationship with and then to obtain (have him or her make a purchase) an initial customer, second, to maintain the relationship so that this initial customer will make repeat purchases, and third, to develop (intensify) the relationship so that the initial customer will make enthusiastic referrals. These goals are accomplished by adding-value in the need-satisfaction buying process.   Presentations are an important part of relationship establishment and maintenance.

Presentations can be categorized by three primary purposes: (a) Persuasion [attempting to have the customer take some type of action], (b) Informing [bringing new information to the attention of the customer],   and (c) Reminding [customer of your successful relationship]. Remember that you maintain and develop the relationship by varied contacts and make presentations that are not always aimed at persuasion.

Also, you may be meeting with the prospect/customer: (a) in person, one-on-one or selling to a group, (b) by printed material (letters and brochures sent through the mail, and/or (c) electronically, telephone (one person or conference call), teleconferencing (audio/video connections), and/or by computer (shared electronic documents, e-mail, and internet interactive discussion).

Guidelines for Developing a Consultative Persuasive Presentation. In preparing for your presentation the following guidelines should be of assistance (Manning and Reese, 1998, p.235):

1.          Place Special Emphasis on the Relationship. Good rapport between the salesperson and the prospect is a necessary foundation for the use of a consultative sales presentation.   People prefer to comply with requ3essts or suggestions from people they know and like.   They also will communicate more openly and freely when a relationship is one of rapport.

2.         Sell Benefits and Obtain Customer Reactions. People do not buy things , they buy what the things will do for them . Don’t make the mistake of listing a number of features and assuming that the prospect will interpret them into benefits that you perceive.   Make sure that you:

            a.             Translate features into benefits – We have a large meeting room (feature) which means to you (translation words) that your meeting attendees will be comfortable and relaxed (benefit).

            b.             Obtain a reaction from the buyer – Follow the above translation of features and benefits with a question, for example, “Is that what you had in mind?”             This confirmation question allows you to check to see if you are on the right track. It allows the prospect to object to what you said and, thus allows you an opportunity to clarify what the customer really needs.

3.            Minimize the Negative Impact of Change. In introducing new products/services and new solutions to buyer problems, salespeople are constantly threatening the status quo.   In nearly all selling situations the prospect is being asked to consider change.   Most people resist change.   Change is more acceptable to people who understand the benefits and do not see it as a thereat to their security.  

            The salesperson must     NOT create unrealistic expectations by exaggerating buyer benefits or long-term problems will inevitably surface (loss of credibility, destroyed relationships, dissatisfaction and negative word-of-mouth). Whenever possible, the salesperson should help the customer view change in a positive and realistic way.

4.          Place the Strongest Appeal at the Beginning or End of the Presentation. Research indicates the beginning or end presentation of something is the most memorable.   Appeals are the propositions which are of the highest concern or interest to the prospect. A strong appeal at the beginning with get the prospects positive attention and set the tone for interest in the presentation.   Placed at the end, an appeal sets the tone for the closing or asking of the order.

5.          Use a Persuasive Vocabulary. Words like partnership is a current positive and appealing word.   The prospect feels good about terminology like this.   Research has shown that the twelve most persuasive words in the English language are:   you, money, save, new, results, health, easy, safety, love, discovery, proven, and guarantee.

6.          Use Metaphors and Stories. A metaphor is figurative language that suggests pictorial relationships between objects and ideas.   You can quickly paint vivid, visual pictures for prospects that will command their attention and keep their interest.   For example, “This is the Mercedez-Benz of meeting facilities” which suggests high price and high quality/reliability of the product/service. Stories illustrate in a similar manner but also colorfully enrich the seller/buyer relationship.

7.          General Guidelines for Creating Effective Presentations

            a.             Enhance the presentation with effective demonstration.

            b.             Preplan methods for negotiating and closing the sale.

c.          Plan for the dynamic nature of selling (preplans may have to be altered on the spot – during interaction with the prospect as circumstances change)

d.          Keep your presentation simple and concise

e.          Summarize the presentation (summary of benefits close is discussed below)

f.           Use time wisely (since you have a presentation format to guide you, any long side diversions can quickly be brought back on topic as appropriate)

The consultative selling presentation is a six-step plan. This is the format of a PersuasiveConsultative Presentation.

1.          The Approach

2.           Presentation

3.           Demonstration

4.           Negotiation

5.          Close

6.           Servicing the Sale

            Briefly refer back to the “Need-Satisfaction Theory of the buying process (above) and reflect on how these presentation steps parallel or address buyer’s needs.

Step # 1 - The Approach

Learn how to establish rapport and/or reestablish your relationship upon greeting your prospect/customer.   This is a social contact and influences the tone of the meeting.   What will be your first impression? What would you talk about?   Hopefully, you did your homework in preparation and know a lot about the prospect/customer. After briefly making the social contact, you must transition to the business contact (this is the primary purpose that has brought you to this meeting).

Step # 2 - The Sales Presentation

Need Discovery. In consultative selling, the MOST IMPORTANT value-added activity is discovering and fully understanding the customer’s needs.   Without knowing needs, the seller cannot possibly recommend (as a consultant) product/service benefits that will address (solve) the customer’s needs (problems). In a Single-Meeting Presentation , after establishing rapport, you must ask questions to discover the customer’s needs. In a Multi-Meeting Presentation, you already have discovered the prospect/customer’s needs in a previous meeting.

There are three primary dimensions of “need discovery:   (a) Asking questions, (b) Listen and acknowledge customer response, and (c) Establish buying motives.

  1. Asking Questions. Questions are one of the most effective ways to involve the prospect (potential customer). Appropriate questions reduce tension and build trust in a selling situation because they communicate interest in the other person’s welfare.   A sales presentation without questions closes the door on two-way communication. There are several types of questions to ask in the consultative selling presentation (note that questions are used throughout a presentation not just in the need discovery stage of the selling cycle.   The following table from Manning & Reese Selling Today (1998) illustrates:

2. Listen and Acknowledge Customer Response. The listening rate for most people is about 25%. This means they miss about 75% of the messages spoken by other people.   This ratio can be improved by Developing Active Listing skills – the process of sending back to the person what you as a listener think the communicator (sender) meant, both in terms of content and in terms of feelings.   It involves taking into consideration both verbal and nonverbal signals.

When the listener gives feedback, this allows a check on accuracy and gives the speaker the opportunity to confirm or amend (objection to interpretation/feedback) the listener’s perceptions. Active listening involves four techniques :

a.             Encourage Talking . “I see,” “good point,” and “go-on.” These short prompts or cues indicate that you are listening and that you understand the person’s message and want him or her to keep talking.

b.          Take Notes. Although not necessary at every sales presentation, it is critical during complex selling (“consultative selling”) where accurate and detailed information is essential to create a good written proposal. Be sure to ask for permission to take notes (polite).   And remember that the customer is often taken off the defensive (thinking, “here comes a sales pitch”) to a feeling of “my needs are important.”

c.             Parapharase the Customer’s Meaning with a Confirmation Question. This is also called “reflective” listening. It clarifies meaning and also shows the customer that you are interested in gaining accurate information. For example, “Ms. Client, what I here you saying is…” “Is that right?”   Also, echo your perceptions of what the customer is feeling or perceiving.   “You seem to be a little concerned with what I just presented, how are you feeling?”

d.         Obtain Feedback. Make sure that you get the customer to respond to you questions above.   This will actively involve the customer and demonstrate your interest in them.

            3. Establish buying motives. The primary goal of questioning, listening, and acknowledging is to uncover prospect needs and establish buying motives.   Our efforts to discover prospect needs will be more effective when the buyer’s primary reasons for buying are uncovered.   As mentioned in earlier articles, buyer’s usually have both rational and emotional reasons for buying. While a prospective buyer may state many needs, there usually is a primary motive for buying.   This primary motive or buying need, is often referred to as a hot-button in selling terminology.   Be sure you don’t miss this primary motive.   It is essential to know this motive when making a selling presentation.

            It has been said that buyers buy emotionally (out of fear of loss or for gain) and justify their purchases rationally.   This is more often true in consumer product/service markets, but is still operational even in business-to-business markets.   Thus, sellers should always ask fact-finding questions (to discover rational needs) and feel-finding questions (to discover the underlying emotional motivators).

Presentation of Product/Services that Fulfill Customer Needs. The following sequence indicates the parts of a Multi-Meeting Presentation after customer needs have been discovered:

(a) Summarize the customer’s needs ,

( b) One need/benefit at a time, match product benefits with each of the prospect/customer’s needs. Use a sequence such as this, “You indicated a need for…; here is my product feature (need solution) and demonstration ( proof ) of that feature; which means to you…( translates the feature into a benefit ); is this what you had in mind?”( confirmation question )

NOTE: in a Multi-Meeting presentation, you selected your product/service benefits that meet needs BEFORE this presentation and have written up a written proposal that shows these benefits matched with needs.

(c) Summarize all of the benefits that satisfy the customer’s needs , (handle any objections here-see comments on objections below)

( d) Make a closing statement or question (ask for the order/contract), and

(e) Make arrangements for an after-sale service . After the customer has made a purchase, the seller needs to “follow-up.” For example, you might tell the customer that after the contract has been signed, they will be contacted by a convention services manager (CSM) who will begin to help them detail plans for their future meeting.   Or, you may describe how you, the seller, will continue to work with them.

In essence, the above sequence is what a presentation should look like.   It’s logical and flows systematically from the needs first discovered, through statements and demonstration of product/service benefits that satisfy these needs, to asking for the order, and through after-sale service.  

Step # 3 – Demonstration

            Demonstration supports your presentation (above) and simultaneously occurs in the above sequence. Presenting in words alone is not sufficient to have the potential customer to fully understand how your product or service satisfies their needs.   You need to show how the product/service accomplishes this.   Demonstration, however, varies in its form.   If you have a tangible product that does something (auto, copying machine, etc), you might have the customer try it themselves—drive it or make copies.   If you have an intangible product/service (hotel, restaurant, etc.) you might have the customer experience it—stay overnight or eat dinner.   Having the customer have   first-hand exposure to the product/service is best, however you may be making a   sales presentation at his or her office, thus, pictures or video may have to substitute for first hand exposure.

            An example of having a first hand exposure while making a demonstration of a hotel being considered for a major meeting might be:   (a) inviting the customer (meeting planner) to stay in your hotel and (b) give a verbal presentation while walking the customer through a “site-visit” say to your meeting rooms, to meet your chef, meet a convention services person (who will be coordinating the meeting) and other important areas under decision consideration by the meeting planner.

Step # 4 - Negotiating Buyer Resistance

The following discussion is familiar to you as, “Handling Objections,” however; this term connotes a “win/lose” type of negotiation.   It also connotes that somehow you plan to manipulate the prospect/customer to make the purchase using whatever techniques or means possible.   Of course, a customer who later discovers that the purchased product does not fully satisfy their needs or that he or she has been manipulated, is not a candidate for a relationship with you.   Consultative Selling relies on “win/win” negotiations. These are open, a two-way problem solving dialogue, and conducted in an atmosphere of trust.   Thus, the term, “Negotiating Buyer Resistance” connotes the right for the customer to resist if the product does not satisfy their needs and/or if the customer doesn’t fully understand your presentation.   It’s imperative that you assume a problem-solving consultative stance, fully listen to and understand the customer.

NOTE:   Discussed below in Closing, methods used vary with whether or not you are involved with transactional selling (small sales that will be accomplished in a single sales call) or consultative selling (large, complex sales that require multiple sales calls). Similarly, negotiation/objection-handling methods vary with the type of sale in which you are involved. The following discussion primarily deals with negotiating resistance during transactional selling, but does provide insights into negotiating consultative sales.

Of course, your experience tells you that in most presentations you will meet resistance to your presentation (your presentation of your product’s ability to solve customer’s needs and problems).   Resistance can occur at any time during the presentation.   It may occur at the conclusion of a Benefit/Need statement when the salesperson asks a Confirmation question, at the Close statement, and/or anywhere else. There are common types of customer resistance and you must know these and be skilled in various methods to address this resistance.

            For example, price is the most common type of resistance. Other types of resistance include: (a) resistance to the source (customer has loyalty to a competitor), (b) resistance related to time (customer doesn’t want to make a decision at the time of the presentation closing statement), (c) resistance to the product itself (customer is not familiar with the product or is familiar but has preconceived misconceptions), and (d) resistance to the need for the product (customer truly doesn’t need or doesn’t know that they need).

            Methods to answer customer resistance include but are not limited to: (a) Direct Denial , which clarifies facts, (b) Indirect Denial , which acknowledges partial validity of the customer’s objection but offsets with a superior benefit, (c) Trial Offer of the product to reduce the customer’s perceived risk, (d) Superior Benefit , which outweighs the competitor’s offering, (e) Third Party Endorsement , which adds credibility, (f) Question Format , which restates the benefit and suggests an obviously rational choice to be made by the customer, and (g) Demonstration , which is a tangible supporting “proof” device that usually is combined with any of the methods above.

STEP # 5 - Closing and Confirming the Sale

Closing “asks” for the order and Confirming “reassures” the buyer that they have made the right decision.   Closing the sale is less difficult if the presentation process has been properly handled. Closing is part of the selling process and is a logical outcome of well-planned presentation management.

The closing stage in large and multi-call sales differs from the closing stage single-call sales.   In single-call sales, closing asks for the order.   In multi-call sales commitment from the customer can be expressed when the customer agrees to advance the buying process to the next stage (the next sales call).   A successful close in the multi-call sale might be the customer’s agreement to bring a higher level decision-maker into the selling/buying negotiation—an advancement of the process.   While the mechanics of transactional closing techniques (effective in single-call sales) are not always applicable to multi-call consultative selling, a well-rounded and developed salesperson knows these techniques and when and where to use them. The following describes these transactional selling techniques.

Closing a sale can be facilitated by some general guidelines .   These should be accomplished during the presentation: (a) focus on dominant buying motives, (b) negotiate the tough points before attempting the close, (c) avoid surprises [new information] at the close, (d) do not isolate the prospect/customer during the sale [ensure that there has been two-way dialogue and involvement during the presentation], (e) display a high degree of self-confidence at the close, (f) ask for the order more than once [don’t give up if the buyer says, “no” the first time that you make a closing statement/question], and recognize closing clues during the presentation [prospect/customer may indicate verbal or non-verbal clues and you must be ready to Close at that point] (Manning & Reece, 1997).

Closing a sale can be facilitated by some specific methods .   In preparing for your presentation in the Pre-Approach, it is advisable that you review the following closing methods and be prepared, if appropriate, to use one or all of them: (a) Trial Close , used at an opportune time during the presentation and when you perceive the prospect/customer is about to make a decision, (b) Summary of Benefits Close , used after you have presented the major benefits solving the customer’s needs and perceive his or her affirmative decision, (c) Assumption Close , used when you believe that there is a high probability of an affirmative decision, (d) Special Concession Close, gives the prospect/buyer something extra for acting immediately, (e) Negotiating the Single-Problem Close , used when there is resistance on a minor point and you move forward with a close attempt while simultaneously including a creative solution to the minor problem and resistance, (g) Limited Choice Close allows the prospect/customer several options and you to determine the relative degree of they buyer’s interest in each option; at the closing attempt, you then remove all options except those of high prospect/customer interest, and (h) Direct Appeal Close is simply asking for the order in a straightforward manner.

Confirming the sale occurs after the customer says, “yes.” The purpose is to reassure the customer by pointing out that he or she has made the correct decision.   This step is important is addressing "post-purchase remorse” which is a common emotion following a purchase decision. In Relationship Selling, Closing the Sale is the beginning of a long-term relationship with the customer. Your reassurance will be helpful in maintaining and developing this relationship.

STEP # 6 - After-Sale Service

Servicing the sale encompasses all activities that enhance satisfaction with the purchase and all activities that enhance use of the product/service that was purchased. Service management is an essential part of Relationship Selling because Customer Satisfaction determines the length, width, depth, and duration of a customer’s relationship with you and your company. Servicing the sale maintains the relationship, which leads to repeat business, and increased purchases.

Customer satisfaction is the result of product/service performance compared with customers’ expectations of product/service performance.   Customers obtain their expectations from messages from many sources but expectations come primarily from marketing messages and promises made by salespeople. Long-term relationships will not happen if promised expectations are not kept.

In the service industry [the hospitality industry] promises to the customer are met in two ways: (a) the employees of the organization [hotel] deliver the product/service that is promised by the salesperson and (b) you do what you say you will do. You have little or no direct control over employee performance; only indirect control through relationships you build with the employees [internal customers] and direct appeal to the general operations manager.   However, you have direct control of the delivery of your promises made to the customer. There are three general areas where you can actively manage after-sale service: (a) follow-through on Assurances and Promises that were part of your sales presentation, (b) add value with suggestion selling of items that relate to the main purchase and further enhance it, and (c) customer follow-up methods which have the major objective to express your appreciation for the purchase and further enhance your relationship with the customer.

            Service management after the initial purchase is the key to continuing long-term relationships.   In the model (Figure 1), these relationships are grounded by your continuous personal and professional development.   These relationships are developed by your commitment to consciously cycle through the Selling Process Phases. And they are maintained by your commitment to after-sale service management.   These long-term relationships will produce repeat sales and referral business.

Copyright ©2000 by Richard G. McNeill

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Supercharge your Cold Emails

The Complete Guide to Consultative Selling: How to Build Trust and Close More Deals

Tired of being a pushy salesperson, whom people don’t listen? There’s a better way. Consultative selling focuses on building trusting relationships by understanding customers’ needs first.

This in-depth guide covers everything from consultative selling techniques to real-world examples and implementation tips. Learn how leading with insight over pitches wins more deals and lifetime partnerships.

Page Contents

What is Consultative Selling?

Consultative selling is an approach focused on understanding and solving customer problems through personalized solutions. It prioritizes building trusting , long-term relationships over quick, transactional sales.

Definition and Overview

Consultative selling can be defined as a sales methodology centered around putting the customer’s interests first. The goal is to develop a nuanced understanding of the prospect’s unique challenges and craft tailored recommendations that directly address their needs.

Rather than simply pitching product features and benefits , the consultative seller focuses on listening, asking thoughtful questions, and identifying gaps the customer is looking to fill. They position themselves as a trusted advisor aiming to provide maximum value, not just make a quick buck.

This approach was first introduced in the 1970s, though it took time to gain mainstream traction. Some perceived it as a lengthy, cumbersome sales process . But it has seen a resurgence as buyers become increasingly selective and value relationships over flashy features.

Consultative selling is iterative and fluid. It may involve multiple conversations spanning an extended period to fully grasp the prospect’s goals and environment. This data informs personalized proposals outlining how the seller’s offering can impact the customer’s bottom line and overcome their challenges.

How Consultative Selling Differs from Transactional Approaches

Transactional selling focuses on exchanging a product or service for money in a straightforward transaction. The seller’s pitch highlights features, pricing, and availability. The relationship ends once the deal closes .

Consultative selling, on the other hand, prioritizes building an ongoing partnership. The seller seeks to understand the prospect’s worldview, issues, and definitions of success. They make recommendations tailored to the customer’s specific situation and desired outcomes.

Here’s a comparison of the two approaches:

Transactional Selling

• Emphasizes product features
• Focuses on price and availability
• Generic, one-size-fits-all pitches
• Short-term relationships
• Seller competes against other sellers

Consultative Selling

• Focuses on customer values
• Prioritizes desired outcomes
• Customized proposals based on prospect needs
• Long-term partnerships
• Seller partners with customer against challenges

So in short, consultative selling is about understanding and advising, while transactional selling is focused on exchanging. The former cultivates relationships; the latter closes one-off deals.

The Benefits of Consultative Selling

There are many advantages to embracing a consultative approach:

Builds trust and loyalty – By taking time to understand prospects and crafting customized proposals, consultative sellers position themselves as trusted advisors rather than salespeople. This cultivates loyalty and increases customer lifetime value.

Enhances perception of value – Demonstrating how your offering specifically solves a prospect’s challenges increases perceived value. Customers focus less on price when clear ROI is presented.

Higher close rates – Customers are more likely to close when they feel understood and sold personalized solutions they can’t find elsewhere.

Improves customer retention – Ongoing relationships and loyalty reduce customer churn. Consultative sellers become partners invested in long-term success.

Referrals and upsells – Satisfied customers are more likely to refer others and make additional purchases through a consultative seller they trust.

Larger deal sizes – Deals closed through lengthy consultative sales cycles tend to have higher price points than transactional, invoice-based sales.

Competitive differentiation – Few sellers take the time to understand prospects and provide bespoke solutions. The consultative approach can really set a business apart.

So in an increasingly competitive marketplace, investing in relationships and customer success through consultative selling can really pay dividends across key business metrics.

The process does require patience, research, and consultative skills. But the commitment pays off with buyers who trust you, pay you, partner with you, refer you, and help you sell more over time.

Why Consultative Selling Matters

Consultative selling is more than just a buzzword – it’s a proven methodology for boosting sales by focusing on customer relationships and bespoke solutions. Here’s a deeper look at why it’s so impactful.

It Builds Trust and Relationships

At its core, consultative selling is about understanding prospects as people first, and customers second. It recognizes that people prefer doing business with partners they know, like and trust.

Consultative sellers invest time upfront establishing rapport. They ask thoughtful questions, listen intently, and get to know prospects as individuals. This cultivates a relationship rooted in mutual understanding and goodwill.

According to LinkedIn research , 38% of buyers say trust in the salesperson influences their purchase decision. Clearly, relationships impact the bottom line.

Trust also provides resilience when inevitable obstacles arise. Partners give each other benefit of the doubt and work through challenges together. One survey showed 95% of customers stay loyal after a good service recovery by a company they trust.

So while transactional sellers view prospects as transactions, consultative sellers see them as long-term partnerships. This distinction in mindset has profound impacts.

It Prioritizes Understanding Customer Needs

Consultative selling flips the script on traditional pitching. Instead of promoting product features, sellers focus on grasping each prospect’s unique needs and goals first.

This empathetic approach demonstrates the seller cares about the prospect’s interests more than just making a quick sale. It builds goodwill and shows the seller is invested in helping the prospect achieve their objectives.

ASKING SMART QUESTIONS IS KEY. Savvy consultative sellers ask open-ended questions to uncover pain points like:

• What challenges is your business facing right now?
• How do you evaluate success for this initiative?
• What obstacles stand in the way of achieving your goals?
• How is this issue impacting your operations?

Thoughtful questioning helps sellers gain a holistic perspective of the prospect’s world. This context allows the seller to then position solutions tailored to the prospect’s definitions of success.

It Provides Personalized Solutions

The depth of understanding gained through consultative selling allows sellers to craft customized proposals based on each prospect’s unique situation.

Rather than promoting a one-size-fits-all offering, consultative sellers present solutions specifically adapted to address the prospect’s needs. They explain exactly how their product or service can impact the metrics and objectives the prospect cares about most.

This tailored approach makes the value proposition resonate on an individual level. The prospect sees how the solution fits into their specific ecosystem and goals. Customized pitches also help sellers stand out from competitors pitching generic, boilerplate offerings.

Savvy consultative sellers further personalize engagements by…

• Referencing previous conversations and insights learned
• Incorporating the prospect’s preferred terminology
• Including case studies and ROI from similar customers
• Outlining how the solution benefits the prospect’s role
• Demonstrating deep understanding of the prospect’s industry

This high degree of personalization makes prospects feel understood. It shows the seller did their homework and tailored their proposal specifically to help the prospect overcome their challenges.

It Improves Customer Retention

Consultative selling focuses on beginning relationships, not ending transactions. This long-view approach delivers major benefits after the deal closes as well.

By taking time to understand objectives, challenges and metrics, consultative sellers become deeply invested in helping customers achieve success after purchase. The relationship shifts from seller and buyer to trusted partners working together.

This trust and collaboration results in greater customer retention and reduced churn. Rather than seeking transactions, consultative sellers seek to maximize customer lifetime value.

Ongoing consultations also provide opportunities to refine solutions and uncover additional challenges to solve. Happy customers become brand ambassadors and sources of referrals and new business.

Consultative selling takes more work upfront, but delivers exponential dividends over the full customer lifecycle. Forward-thinking businesses recognize that it’s more expensive to acquire new customers than retain existing ones.

Key Takeaways

The consultative approach focuses on mutual understanding, trusted relationships and tailored solutions. While it requires more effort initially, it drives tremendous long-term value by:

• Building credibility and goodwill with prospects
• Uncovering customer challenges on a granular level
• Crafting highly personalized proposals
• Becoming deeply invested in customer success
• Increasing customer loyalty, referrals and lifetime value

In a crowded marketplace where buyers are wary of boilerplate sales pitches, consultative selling stands out by demonstrating you truly understand prospects and are devoted to their success. Taking this partner-oriented approach results in better relationships, bigger deals, and greater long-term mutually beneficial outcomes.

The Consultative Selling Process Step-by-Step

Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s walk through the consultative selling process from initial research to ongoing relationship management.

Step 1: Conduct Research on the Prospect

Thorough research is the foundation of consultative selling. Without understanding a prospect’s business, challenges and industry landscape, you cannot have informed conversations about their needs.

Aim to gather as much context as possible before initial outreach, including:

• Company overview: Size, revenue, location, products, executives, culture, competition, recent news.
• Industry research: Trends, growth projections, regulations, innovations, pain points.
• Buyer research: Role, responsibilities, background, priorities, challenges.
• Existing solutions: What vendors or solutions are they currently using? Any obvious gaps?
• Previous conversations: Notes, outstanding questions, upcoming milestones.
• Trends and current events: Macroeconomic factors, political landscape, adjacent industries.

This baseline understanding allows you to prepare informed, strategic questions demonstrating your existing knowledge. It also helps determine if there’s alignment between your solutions and the prospect’s needs.

Leverage tools like LinkedIn, company websites, news sites, industry research reports, and CRM data to build prospect profiles.

Step 2: Ask Thoughtful Questions and Listen Intently

The initial prospect conversation focuses on learning as much as possible through thoughtful questioning and active listening.

Aim to ask a mix of:

• Open-ended questions that allow prospects to elaborate on challenges, goals, definitions of success.
• Clarifying questions to confirm your understanding as the conversation progresses.
• Follow-up questions to probe deeper on key topics.

Listen intently to answers without interrupting. Let the prospect’s needs and narratives guide the discussion rather than sticking to a rigid script.

Take notes on key details, challenges mentioned, and follow-up questions to revisit. Pay attention to cues like changes in energy when discussing certain topics.

After the initial questions, summarize your understanding and invite the prospect to elaborate where you may have missed the mark.

This questioning and listening process builds rapport while gathering intel to shape your customized solution.

Step 3: Diagnose Pain Points and Challenges

Next, analyze the prospect conversation to identify the root causes of their challenges and diagnose the core issues to address.

Look for recurring themes in the problems they describe. Drill down to the underlying sources of those problems. Ensure you have a clear picture of the prospect’s world and objectives.

Common pain points you may uncover include:

• Losing sales to competitors
• Declining customer retention
• Supply chain disruptions
• Communication breakdowns
• Lack of visibility into operations
• Manual processes causing bottlenecks

Identify where the prospect is struggling to meet business goals. What processes orvendors are underperforming? Where are inefficiencies resulting in wasted time and money? What risks keep them up at night?

This diagnosis will shape your proposed solution. Resist the urge to pitch your product at this stage. Stay focused on truly understanding the prospect’s landscape first.

Step 4: Present Tailored Solutions

Now you can develop a preliminary solution addressing the prospect’s challenges uncovered during your diagnosis.

The proposal should focus on:

• Fixing their problems : How specifically will your solution alleviate pain points and bridge gaps? Include data demonstrating efficacy.
• Achieving their goals : Connect your capabilities directly to the prospect’s goals, metrics, and definitions of success.
• Delivering ROI : Outline the tangible value and ROI your solution will drive in financial terms and time/effort saved.
• Case studies : Show examples of past clients you’ve helped in similar situations.
• Pricing and next steps : Provide pricing options and clearly outline next steps in the sales process.

The proposal should demonstrate a deep understanding of the prospect’s unique situation based on your conversations. Avoid generic messaging that could apply to any customer.

Present your solution as not just a tool, but a strategic partnership to achieve progress on shared objectives.

Step 5: Follow Up and Build the Relationship

Consultative selling is an iterative process requiring consistency and persistence. Stay engaged after presenting your initial solution.

• Ask for feedback: Ask for reactions to your proposal and if they have any questions or concerns. Welcome constructive criticism.
• Address concerns: If they surface doubts or objections, hear them out carefully. Then follow up to resolve concerns and misperceptions.
• Send resources: Forward relevant content, case studies, or news tailored to problems you discussed.
• Connect periodically: Check in consistently via your prospect’s preferred communication channel. Offer helpful advice and insights proactively.
• Add value: Look for opportunities to provide value whether or not they become a customer, i.e. connections to subject matter experts or excellent content.
• Track progress: Note any changes at the prospect company that may influence their needs. Consider modifying your proposal accordingly.
• Solve new problems: Regularly ask if they have any emerging challenges you can help solve. Surface additional ways your solution can support them.

This consistent engagement demonstrates commitment to the prospect’s success. It builds trust that you’ll be a reliable long-term partner, not just a salesperson chasing commissions.

Consultative selling is a continuous, fluid process tailored to each unique prospect. Mastering it involves:

• Deep pre-meeting research setting the stage for informed conversations
• Active listening focused on uncovering true needs
• Methodical diagnostics revealing root causes of problems
• Bespoke proposals directly addressing prospect challenges
• Consistent engagement demonstrating long-term commitment

This step-by-step approach results in proposals resonating powerfully because they reflect a deep understanding of what each individual prospect cares about. It builds partnerships where both parties are invested in shared outcomes.

While demanding initially, consultative selling done right delivers huge dividends in the form of deals closed and successful long-term customer relationships.

Key Skills for Consultative Sellers

Consultative selling requires a specific skillset optimized for building relationships, uncovering needs, and providing bespoke solutions. Here are the core competencies top consultative sellers possess.

1. Active Listening

Active listening is the most essential consultative selling skill. Sales conversations are an opportunity to learn, not just pitch. Savvy sellers listen far more than they speak.

Dedicate at least 70-80% of prospect interactions to mindful listening. Avoid thinking about what you’ll say next while they are speaking. Focus completely on absorbing what they share.

Demonstrate active listening by:

• Maintaining eye contact and open body language
• Paraphrasing and summarizing to confirm understanding
• Taking notes on key details
• Verbally affirming with occasional “Yes” and “That makes sense”
• Probing deeper with clarifying follow-up questions

Skilled active listeners uncover the full context, read between the lines, and identify prospects’ unstated needs.

Patience and discipline are required to keep quiet, especially when eager to discuss solutions. But restraint allows prospects to guide conversations, revealing pain points organically.

2. Clear Communication

While active listening takes center stage, clear communication is still crucial for consultative sellers. Convey ideas persuasively and avoid misalignments.

Tips for communicating clearly:

• Match prospects’ vocabulary, terminology and pace
• Share insights concisely using layman’s terms
• Make complex concepts relatable through analogies
• Know when to politely interject versus letting prospects continue
• Confirm mutual understanding regularly
• Welcome clarifying questions from prospects

Clear communication also means being transparent about your offerings, limitations, and process. Prospects see through ambiguous, glossy sales talk.

Honesty and candor build trust. Admit weaknesses, but explain how you address them. Avoid overpromising. Set aligned expectations.

3. Deep Product and Industry Expertise

Consultative sellers must intimately understand both their own solutions and the prospect’s marketplace.

Being a subject matter expert earns credibility with prospects. It demonstrates you grasp their world and can meaningfully advise them.

Develop expertise through:

• Regular training on your products’ capabilities and new features
• Studying your ideal customer profiles – their roles, goals, challenges
• Immersing yourself in the prospect’s industry by reading trade publications, following influencers, and understanding trends.
• Familiarizing yourself with competitors’ offerings to differentiate strengths
• Role-playing scenarios covering objections and common prospect questions

This domain mastery allows for informed questioning and tailored proposals. Prospects rely on consultative sellers’ experience to guide strategy conversations.

4. Rapport-Building Skills

People buy from those they like and trust. Consultative selling banks on developing genuine rapport.

Rapport stems from prospects sensing sellers have their best interests in mind. This requires emotional intelligence, ethics and likability.

Build rapport by:

• Making authentic small talk to establish common ground
• Displaying empathy when prospects describe challenges
• Sharing how your solutions have helped similar prospects
• Being humble – prospects want partners, not lecturing know-it-alls
• Finding sincere compliments and points of mutual interest
• Avoiding controversial or insensitive remarks
• Respecting prospects’ time during conversations

Rapport makes prospects more receptive to recommendations and builds loyalty beyond a single transaction.

5. Presentation and Problem-Solving Skills

Consultative sellers must persuasively present their solutions while addressing prospects’ concerns.

When proposing your solution:

• Quantify value using metrics and data demonstrating ROI
• Get granular by including specific capabilities addressing pain points
• Use visuals like charts to illustrate benefits
• Tell success stories through customer case studies
• Invite participation by asking for reactions and feedback
• Field doubts with patience and constructive responses – never get defensive

Preparation separates average responses from stellar ones. Anticipate likely concerns ahead of time and rehearse replies. Arm yourself with proof sources to overcome objections.

A polished yet conversational presentation style instills confidence you can deliver results. Prospects will rely heavily on your guidance, so showcase your problem-solving acumen.

Mastery of consultative selling includes:

• Active listening: Patience to listen far more than speak
• Clear communication: Concise, transparent dialogue tailored to prospects
• Deep expertise: Both product and industry knowledge establishing credibility
• Rapport: Developing genuine connections and empathy
• Persuasive presentation: Quantifying value and addressing concerns compellingly

Sharpening these skills takes work, but pays dividends by earning prospects’ trust. They form the core of the consultative approach, empowering sellers to provide customized solutions adding tremendous value.

Examples of Consultative Selling in Action

Consultative selling is applicable across industries when customized solutions and strong relationships are prioritized. Here are a few examples of how it works in real-world scenarios:

Healthcare: Understanding Patient Needs

In healthcare, consultative selling involves taking time to understand both patient and organizational needs.

For example, a medical device sales rep may meet with stakeholders at a hospital to discuss improving patient monitoring and incident response times. After researching the hospital’s processes and needs, the rep uncovers that delayed alerting of clinical staff is leading to slower response times.

Rather than immediately pitching their monitoring devices, the consultative seller first demonstrates deep knowledge of the hospital’s objectives, metrics, and challenges. They ask thoughtful questions to grasp the workflow, surface unstated needs, and identify budget constraints.

After this discovery process, the rep presents a monitoring solution tailored to the hospital’s goals, existing infrastructure, data systems, and budget. They explain specifically how centralized monitoring will allow clinical staff to respond more swiftly to patient needs.

If price is still an obstacle, the seller explores financing options or scalable starts allowing the hospital to test the solution. They position themselves as a partner, not just a vendor, invested in empowering the hospital to improve patient outcomes.

Financial Services: Analyzing Financial Goals

In financial services scenarios, consultative sellers take time to understand clients’ financial situations, objectives and levels of risk tolerance.

For example, when proposing investment or insurance products, consultative sellers avoid promoting offerings right away. Instead, they use questions and active listening to gauge clients’ definitions of financial success, current challenges, and apprehensions.

The seller analyzes the client’s full financial picture across investments, debts, assets, income streams, and liabilities. This helps diagnose the client’s primary financial obstacles and identify ideal solutions suited to their unique position.

Only after this discovery process does the seller present bespoke solutions tailored to the individual’s goals. They explain how the products fit into the client’s financial ecosystem and quantify the long-term impact on ROI, cash flow, and financial stability.

Throughout this process, the seller aims to establish an ongoing advisory partnership focused on helping the client continually achieve their evolving financial goals over the long haul.

Tech: Aligning Solutions to Business Objectives

When selling technology solutions, consultative sellers avoid leading with technical features. Instead, they focus on understanding each prospect’s unique business objectives, processes and pain points.

For example, an ERP software seller first investigates how the prospect currently handles inventory, order management, accounting, HR, manufacturing, and other operations. They learn where inefficiencies and gaps exist impeding the prospect’s goals.

Rather than instantly promoting the full gamut of ERP features, the consultative seller highlights only capabilities that solve the prospect’s diagnosed challenges. They quantify how an integrated ERP platform can impact critical KPIs based on data from similar customers.

The tailored proposal outlines how specific ERP modules address the prospect’s organizational priorities and pain points. Pricing options are presented to align with budgets. The seller positions the software as a strategic long-term investment, not just a third-party tool.

This thorough diagnostic and highly customized presentation demonstrates the consultative seller’s commitment to the prospect’s success. The seller aims to be an ongoing trusted advisor guiding optimal usage long after implementation.

• Consultative selling principles translate across industries when customer needs are prioritized over product features.
• Taking time upfront to diagnose prospects’ goals, metrics, challenges and definitions of success allows for highly tailored solutions.
• Bespoke proposals based on each prospect’s unique environment build trust and demonstrate a partnership mindset.
• Consultative sellers position solutions as long-term collaborations enabling prospects to continually advance strategic objectives.

The same methodology can be applied to any scenario by focusing on really understanding prospects and taking ownership of their success. This marrying of product and purpose is the essence of consultative selling.

How to Develop a Consultative Selling Mindset

Embracing a consultative mindset is essential for salespeople adapting to this customer-centric approach. Here are tips for making the mental shift.

Focus on Customer Outcomes

The core mental shift in consultative selling involves focusing completely on customer outcomes rather than seller goals.

Traditional sellers start with thoughts like:

• “I need to hit my sales targets this quarter.”
• “I need to convince this prospect my product is best.”
• “I need to beat my competition.”

Consultative sellers instead adopt mindsets like:

• “I need to thoroughly understand this prospect’s problems.”
• “How can I help this prospect achieve their goals?”
• “What solution will maximize this prospect’s success?”

This customer-centric mental model frames sales conversations around discovering prospects’ needs first rather than pitching immediately. It prioritizes helping prospects solve problems over “selling.”

Consultative sellers understand that if prospects achieve positive outcomes, deals will naturally follow. But chasing short-term sales at the expense of understanding prospects rarely optimizes long-term gains.

Adopting this mindset takes practice. Salespeople must consciously reframe internal self-talk to align with customers’ best interests, not just revenue targets. But this reframing builds the foundation for consultative selling success.

Be Authentic and Build Trust

Prospects have highly attuned “sleazy salesperson” radars. They distrust generic pitches and canned presentations.

Consultative selling depends on authenticity and genuinely caring about customers’ interests. This starts with having integrity and building trust-based connections.

• Establish common ground: Ask about prospects’ roles, passions, and interests to find mutual connections.
• Show you’ve done your homework: Reference details about prospects’ companies and individual backgrounds.
• Admit weaknesses: Where your solution has shortcomings or gaps, own up to them. Focus on how you’ll address them.
• Tell real success stories: Share specific examples of helping past clients without exaggeration.
• Follow up consistently: Demonstrate you’re thinking of prospects outside of sales conversations.
• Avoid acronyms and jargon: Use conversational language prospects relate to.

When prospects sense sales interactions revolve around their needs rather than reps’ agendas, they become receptive to recommendations.

Ask Good Questions, Then Truly Listen

In traditional selling, reps lead with product pitches and dominate conversations. Consultative selling takes the opposite approach.

Prepare open-ended questions focused on uncovering prospects’ goals, challenges, definitions of success, and concerns. Then diligently listen to responses instead of barreling to your next talking point.

Some examples:

• “Help me understand your current workflow and processes. What’s working well and what are some sticking points?”
• “If you had a magic wand, what would your ideal [job title] role look like in 5 years?”
• “How do you measure the success and impact of solutions like ours?”
• “What factors most influence your decision-making process when evaluating vendors?”

These discovery-focused questions demonstrate your interest in prospects’ perspectives. Thoughtful listening without interruption then builds trust and insight.

Remember, conversation ratios should tip heavily toward prospects. Let them guide discussions while resisting the urge to pitch prematurely.

Seek Long-Term Partnerships

The traditional sales mindset is often focused on short-term targets – closing the quarter strong, hitting monthly quotas, etc.

Consultative sellers instead prioritize beginning long-term partnerships over one-off transactions. They focus on customer lifetime value not just immediate sales.

This partnership mentality manifests through:

• Regular success reviews ensuring the solution continually meets customers’ evolving needs
• Quarterly business reviews to discuss new objectives and brainstorm areas for growth
• Cross-selling and upselling additional solutions customers benefit from
• Automated nudges when new features fitting past needs arise
• Periodic training refreshers and user maturity assessments
• Ongoing education through webinars, events, and content
• Facilitating peer knowledge sharing and ideation between customers

Adopting this long-term mindset makes sales conversations about starting collaborative journeys rather than completing transactions. There is always more value to unlock.

Key Mindset Shifts

Migrating from traditional to consultative selling involves reframing:

• From sales quotas to customer outcomes
• From scripted pitches to authentic conversations
• From talking to thoughtful questioning and active listening
• From transactions to long-term partnerships

This mental transition empowers salespeople to provide unprecedented value to customers.

Consultative selling succeeds when salespeople truly adopt customer-centric mindsets. That authentic commitment to prospects’ best interests comes through in sales conversations and drives relationships, referrals and revenue over time.

Overcoming Objections with a Consultative Approach

Objections are inevitable in sales . Consultative sellers view them as opportunities to better understand prospects and refine solutions.

Turn Objections into Learning Opportunities

The consultative approach welcomes objections versus fighting them. Sales objections signify prospects are engaged. They indicate areas where additional tailoring or education would strengthen your proposal.

When objections arise:

• Listen actively: Let prospects fully voice concerns without interrupting. Seek to understand where they are coming from.
• Ask clarifying questions: Don’t make assumptions. Have them elaborate on objections to grasp root causes.
• Take notes: Document all objections to address later. Demonstrate you take their concerns seriously.
• Thank them: Express appreciation for their candor. Feedback makes your solution stronger.

With this mindset, good sales objections provide insights to enhance your value proposition. Leaning into objections demonstrates confidence in your ability to address concerns.

Address Objections Directly and Patiently

Once you understand the substance behind objections, thoughtfully respond to each one. Avoid brushing past concerns just to keep pitching.

When addressing objections:

• Reaffirm your grasp of the concern: Restate the objection to confirm your interpretation is accurate. Ask for any clarification.
• Reply calmly and confidently: Avoid getting defensive or flustered. Objections allow you to reframe and educate.
• Provide counterpoints: Share contrasting perspectives, data points, or case studies countering the objection.
• Suggest alternatives: Propose compromises or alternative options related to the concern.
• Admit weaknesses: It’s OK to acknowledge if the objection reveals an area your solution could improve. Detail how you still deliver value.
• Request feedback: Ask if your response makes sense and if any clarification would help overcome concerns.

The goal is to provide complete and thoughtful explanations instilling confidence you can address objections head-on. Patience and empathy for prospects’ perspectives are key.

Clarify Misunderstandings Respectfully

Sometimes objections stem from prospects simply misunderstanding aspects of your solution. Handle these situations delicately.

When clarifying misunderstandings:

• Stay humble: Phrase clarifications conversationally, not confrontationally. You may have explained something unclearly.
• Provide context: Share analogies, examples or visuals to illustrate concepts they interpreted differently.
• Invite dialogue: Ask if walking through a specific use case would help overcome incorrect assumptions.
• Take ownership: If you communicated unclearly previously, apologize for causing confusion.
• Document for later: Note misunderstood aspects to expand on more clearly in future proposals.

Resist lecturing prospects that they are “wrong.” Gently guide them to correct interpretations without making them feel spoken down to.

Position yourself as a helpful partner, not an all-knowing know-it-all. With complex solutions, clarifying misunderstandings collaboratively is key for alignment.

Handling objections is an art consultative sellers refine through experience. Keep these best practices in mind:

• Welcome objections as opportunities to tailor solutions.
• Truly seek to understand objections’ core source before responding.
• Reply to concerns calmly, confidently and respectfully.
• Leverage facts, data and case studies to overcome misperceptions.
• Admit weaknesses and suggest alternatives or compromises where appropriate.

With the right mindset and preparation, objections become springboards to enhance proposals and build even stronger prospect relationships.

Measuring the Impact and ROI of Consultative Selling

Like any business investment, it’s important to quantify consultative selling’s impact on key performance indicators. Here are metrics to track.

Increased Customer Retention

Consultative selling focuses on long-term partnerships versus chasing one-off sales. This customer-centric approach pays dividends in improved retention and reduced churn.

Measure retention increases by comparing:

• Customer lifetime value: Total revenue generated per customer over time. Consultative selling should increase CLV.
• Client tenure: How long customers remain before cancelling contracts. Longer tenure indicates greater retention.
• Churn rates: The percentage of customers cancelling services over a given timeframe. Lower churn is better.
• Client spend growth: Revenue growth from existing accounts via upsells or add-ons. Consultative sellers uncover more ways to add value over time.
• Loss rate: The number of customers choosing not to renew contracts upon expiry. This should decrease.
• Retention rate: The percentage of customers renewing contracts each period. Higher retention percentages are better.
• Expansion revenue: Revenue from growing business with existing customers. This should steadily rise with consultative account management .

While transactional sales maximize deal volume, consultative partnerships maximize customer lifetime value. Tracking these retention metrics demonstrates that value.

Growth in Repeat Business

Consultative selling drives recurrent sales by:

• Continually uncovering new needs to solve as trusted advisors
• Driving referrals and references from satisfied customers
• Developing loyalty and authority that earns natural extensions of business

To quantify growth from repeat customers, monitor metrics like:

• Repeat purchase rate: How often existing customers make additional purchases
• Cross-sell/upsell conversion rates: Percentage of customers purchasing new offerings
• Share of wallet: Your portion of total spending in customers’ budgets
• Channel diversification: New ways existing customers engage with your brand
• Referral rates: Percentage of customers referring new leads
• Referral conversion rates: Percentage of referred leads becoming customers
• Testimonial volume: Increased customer content promoting your brand

The deeper the relationships consultative sellers build, the more recurring business and referral engagement they generate. Tracking this provides hard ROI evidence.

Increased Referrals and New Leads

Consultative selling positions your company as a trusted partner invested in customers’ success. Satisfied clients become powerful referral sources and brand ambassadors.

Metrics to track include:

• Referral volume: Raw number of referrals over time
• Referral conversion rate: Percentage becoming sales qualified leads
• Referral revenue: Total sales revenue from referred leads
• Referral customer value: Lifetime value of referred accounts
• Content shares: Customers promoting your brand via content and social media
• Case study conversion: Conversion rates from case study promotion
• Reviews and testimonials : Quantity, quality and sentiment of online reviews

Consultative selling increases motivation for customers to proactively vouch for your solution. Monitoring associated referral KPIs quantifies this impact.

Larger Deal Sizes

Consultative selling builds value and trust that increases willingness to pay higher prices. Prospects focus less on bare-minimum solutions when clear ROI is demonstrated.

Track consultative selling’s impact on deal size using metrics like:

• Average sales price/order value: Total dollar value per transaction
• Average deal size: Total contract value for new business
• Average customer value: Total customer lifetime revenue
• Price per user (SaaS): Average subscription fee per user
• Willingness-to-pay: Highest price customers accept
• Discount rates: Lower percentages mean higher prices paid
• Proposal acceptance rates: Higher rates indicate compelling value propositions
• Margins: Improved gross and net margins as costs are spread over larger deals

The depth of needs analysis and tailored solutions in consultative selling drives willingness to pay higher prices for greater measurable value. Tracking deal size KPIs illuminates this revenue impact.

Consultative selling drives:

• Increased customer retention and loyalty
• More repeat sales, referrals and brand advocacy
• Larger deal sizes and willingness to pay

Quantifying these impacts using CRM data and metrics analysis provides hard ROI evidence that consultative selling boosts long-term financial growth.

The numbers validate why taking a partnership approach focused on customer success versus transactional selling pays off handsomely.

Tools and Software to Enhance Consultative Selling

While mindset and soft skills drive consultative selling success, leveraging sales technologies provides valuable data to inform interactions and optimize results.

CRM for Centralizing Prospect Research

Customer relationship management (CRM) software provides a hub for capturing details learned through consultative research and conversations. Features like:

• Contact profiles : Store prospect background, challenges, interests and communications.
• Company records : Maintain org charts, technographics, decision influencers and buying processes.
• Timeline tracking : Log all prospect touchpoints and activity in one visual timeline.
• Document storage : Upload stakeholder research, past proposals, case studies and other collateral.
• Integrations : Sync email, calendar, phone, and video tools into one hub.

Having this unified prospect view eliminates silos and empowers salespeople to personalize interactions leveraging insights learned over time.

CRM data also enables sales leaders to spot trends influencing deal cycles and consultative selling success. Granular tracking provides visibility to refine processes.

Analytics for Tracking Prospect Engagement

Consultative selling is an iterative process requiring consistency and persistence between formal sales meetings.

Analytics help quantify engagement and progression during these nurturing stages by revealing:

• Email open rates : Are prospects reading and engaging with content?
• Click-through rates : What content resonates best with each prospect?
• Lead scoring : Are prospects becoming sales qualified based on activity?
• Deal stage velocity : How quickly are prospects advancing through sales stages?
• Win rates by source : Which lead sources convert best?
• Proposal ROI : Which parts of proposals win deals?

These insights fine-tune consultative selling strategy. For example, low email open rates may indicate ineffective subject lines versus content. Salespeople can then refine email messaging accordingly.

Email Tracking and Response Monitoring

Email is integral for consistent nurturing between consultative selling conversations. Solutions like Mixmax, Hubspot and Outreach enable:

• Read receipt tracking : See if and when prospects open emails.
• Link click analysis : Identify content resonating best with individuals.
• Email productivity tools : Schedule sends, create templates, automate follow-ups and track opens.
• Email response times : Measure how long prospects generally take to reply to emails. Chase down old threads that go unanswered.
• Email capture : Sync sent and received emails to CRM contact records automatically.

These capabilities optimize consultative email cadence, personalization and relevance based on data. They also trigger automated alerts ensuring prompt responses and engagement tracking.

The Future of Consultative Selling

While consultative selling principles remain consistent, new capabilities are emerging to enhance relationships.

Blending Consultative and Transactional Strategies

Consultative and transactional selling are often positioned as polarized opposites. But modern sales evolved towards blending both.

Transactional tactics save time for rudimentary purchases. Consultative relationships provide customization for large, complex deals. An integrated strategy recognizes different sale types require different approaches.

Omnichannel sales technology allows businesses to meet buyers how they want to engage throughout journeys. Chatbots handle simple inquiries. Video meetings maintain personal connections at scale.

Thisunified approach delivers convenience, automation and personalization across the sales lifecycle.

Leveraging AI and Predictive Analytics

Artificial intelligence (AI) augments human intelligence in sales, enabling more meaningful consultative selling at scale. AI can:

• Automate data capture and analysis : Surface insights from mountains of data faster than manual analysis.
• Recommend next best actions : Suggest optimal follow-up activities based on boundless scenario testing.
• Predict behaviors : Forecast deal outcomes, buyer readiness, churn risks, upsell opportunities etc. based on historical patterns.
• Personalize messaging : Generate contextualized content optimized for individual prospects.
• Enrich data : Fill CRM prospect records with additional firmographic and technographic insights.

When layered onto existing processes, AI provides salespeople more bandwidth to focus on building relationships, not administrative tasks. It enhances human strengths rather than replacing them.

Omnichannel Consultative Experiences

Technology dismantles sales channel silos allowing consultative principles to extend across self-service and automated touchpoints. Examples include:

• Smart product tours : Provide personalized walkthroughs based on individual usage.
• Targeted website experiences : Tailor web content to specific visitor needs and interests.
• Contextualized ads : Serve dynamic ads relevant to recent site interactions.
• Interactive bots : Use natural language processing to understand inquiries and provide helpful recommendations.
• Proactive support : Monitor usage to reach out proactively when users show signs of disengagement.
• Community connections : Match users with specific needs to peer experts best positioned to advise them.

These omni-channel experiences mirror the personalized attention of consultative sales. They allow relationships and revenue growth to scale exponentially by delivering consistent tailored value.

Why Transitioning to Consultative Selling is Worth It

Shifting to consultative selling represents a sizeable change for sales organizations optimized for volume over relationships. But the benefits outweigh short-term growing pains.

Long-Term Gains Outweigh Short-Term Risks

Consultative sales cycles take more upfront work. Salespeople must learn new skills. Quotas may initially drop adapting processes.

But these growing pains lead to enhanced deal values, customer loyalty, predictable renewals, and new business from referrals over time. The effort pays compounding dividends after powering through initial adoption challenges.

Leaders must embrace short-term volatility. Educating teams on the “why” behind changes diminishes resistance. Patience and supportive coaching ease uncertainty transitioning to new ways of selling.

It Builds Customer Loyalty and Retention

Transactional selling lacks meaningful differentiation. Price wars ensue as customers bounce between vendors.

Consultative sellers become deeply embedded in customers’ businesses guiding strategy and success. This trusted partnership makes turnover non-viable despite tempting offers from competitors.

Consultative selling minimizes churn by aligning your brand’s success with customers’ own outcomes. The relationship elevates you from vendor to irreplaceable asset.

It’s a Competitive Differentiator

Most sellers lack the patience for consultative selling. Those mastering it stand apart.

In markets saturated with pushy salespeople, consultative selling builds authority. Asking thoughtful questions earns respect. Listening demonstrates empathy. Bespoke solutions prove you go the extra mile.

Adopting modern sales practices ahead of competitors also steals market share. Becoming an early trusted advisor cements customer relationships competitors struggle to crack later.

Forward-looking businesses constantly refine selling practices and processes. Consultative principles will only grow more crucial over time. Jumping ahead positions companies to win.

Developing Consultative Selling Skills Through Training

Consultative selling requires mindset and skill development. Salespeople can gain competency through:

Listening Skills and Conversation Workshops

Active listening is the cornerstone of consultative relationships. Salespeople should train in:

• Mirroring prospect language, energy and body language
• Encouraging elaboration on topics through thoughtful prompts
• Recapping conversations to confirm understanding
• Avoiding interruptions and distractions
• Picking up on subtle cues like changes in tone Role-play exercises help salespeople refine these active listening techniques. Workshops also provide frameworks to structure sales conversations balancing listening with concise insight sharing.

Case Studies and Role Playing Exercises

Practice scenarios based on past client examples provide low-stakes environments to apply consultative approaches. Salespeople can:

• Review actual prospect profiles, objections and needs
• Take turns playing prospect and seller roles
• Receive observation and feedback from managers
• Build intuition responding to various scenarios

Repeated practice embeds consultative skills until they become second nature. This experience boosts confidence applying new abilities in live sales conversations.

Shadowing Top-Performing Reps

There’s no better training than watching consultative selling masters in action. Let new hires or reps transitioning to consultative approaches shadow top performers making calls, leading discovery sessions and handling objections.

Observing excellence provides tangible examples to model. The authenticity of real client interactions builds credibility that training alone may lack.

Allow shadowers to interact with clients where appropriate to get a feel for consultative conversations first-hand. Nothing accelerates learning like hands-on experience alongside proven experts.

Optimizing Your Sales Process for Consultative Selling

Beyond building individual competencies, consultative selling requires aligning broader sales processes.

Extended Sales Cycles to Focus on Relationships

Consultative sales cycles span multiple contacts versus closing in a single call. Adjust quotas, forecasts and nurturing strategies accordingly.

Provide elongated runways for salespeople to methodically build relationships without pressure to pitch prematurely. Accept longer sales cycles as a strategic tradeoff for expanded deal values and accelerated enterprise growth.

With extended cycles, sales and marketing must work closely to fill pipelines. Bolster lead generation and enrich inbound nurturing to feed sales teams consistently.

Content and Collateral to Support Research

Equip salespeople to have informed consultative conversations by providing:

• Industry research reports
• Competitive comparison guides
• Prospecting question frameworks
• Case study and ROI analysis templates
• Proposal and presentation examples
• Conversation starters and email templates
• Objection handling toolkits

This content should align with ideal customer personas in tone and topics. Arm sellers for success at every consultative selling stage.

CRM Integration and Data Centralization

A CRM hub allows salespeople to instantly access research, past communications, and engagement data anywhere.

Integrate communication channels like email and phone with real-time activity logging through APIs. Automate data capture across interactions.

Centralized, accessible prospect records enable personalized conversations leveraging holistic context. Data cleanliness and organization becomes critical.

Proper adoption training and change management eases transitions to centralized systems. But properly rolled out, integrated CRM turbocharges consultative selling.

Handling Common Consultative Selling Challenges

Despite thorough training, consultative selling adoption still brings challenges.

Prospects Focused on Price Not Value

Some prospects fixate on bargain hunting over aligning solutions to strategic needs. Counter this by:

• Demonstrating greater ROI than costs through data and case studies
• Suggesting pilot programs allowing limited initial investment to prove value
• Structuring pricing around milestones and deliverables to share risk
• Exploring budget availability timing if capital is presently constrained

This educational nurturing brings price-focused buyers along to recognize long-term value. Patience and creativity overcome reluctance.

Inability to Reach Decision Makers

Cold outreach to senior leaders struggles to penetrate. This makes diagnosing true needs difficult. Mitigate by:

• Leveraging referrals from current customers to warm introductions
• Name dropping colleagues, partners or other contacts at their company to build legitimacy
• Starting consultations with lower-level staffers to gain insider perspectives
• Offering compelling thought leadership content as an educational olive branch

Persistence pays off to earn time with elusive decision makers. Lower barriers through credible third-party credibility and valuable content.

Slow Progress Building Trust and Credibility

Prospects may be skeptical of salesperson motives or doubt their ability to deliver. Break through by:

• Asking for a chance to learn more before pitching solutions
• Speaking with transparency about capabilities, deficiencies and next steps
• Outlining how you’ve solved challenges for similar customers
• Offering trial programs or pilots to demonstrate delivery prior to major commitments

Gaining credibility takes time. Consistency and honesty overcome resistance to cement profitable long-term partnerships.

Creating a Consultative Selling Culture at Your Company

To fully adopt consultative principles, sales organizations must realign processes, people and leadership support.

Executive Buy-In and Ongoing Support

Changes as sweeping as shifting to consultative selling require executive sponsorship. Leaders must communicate “why” transformations are essential for growth.

They must also reinforce changes through ongoing messaging, coaching, process audits, and results measurement. Support at the top boosts adoption momentum companywide.

Hiring for Consultative Skills and Mindset

Past sales experience becomes secondary to assessing for consultative soft skills in recruiting. Look for candidates who:

• Demonstrate emotional intelligence and listening ability
• Exhibit curiosity and problems solving skills
• Emphasize customer outcomes over sales quotas
• Take measured approaches tailored to prospect needs
• Ask smart questions and welcome open dialogue

Without inherently consultative attributes, new hires face steeper learning curves regardless of past experience. Disposition grows harder to reshape than skillsets.

Incentives Aligned to Customer Success

The old adage “you get what you incent” rings true. Commission structures driving volume over value undercut consultative priorities.

Besides quota attainment, incentivize team metrics like:

• Customer retention and satisfaction
• Profitable deal size and growth
• Account expansion via upsells
• Customer lifetime value
• Sales cycle velocity

This motivates behaviors enhancing long-term relationships beyond short-term sales boosts. Customer success should be tied to seller success.

Signs Your Team is Ready to Adopt Consultative Selling

Look for these indicators that your sales organization can successfully transition to consultative principles:

Strong Product/Industry Expertise

Consultative selling depends on salespeople immersing themselves in prospects’ worlds. They must intimately understand their own solutions and markets.

If your team lacks foundational knowledge, first shore up training. Consultative selling works when reps grasp customer challenges and how to solve them.

Struggling With Transactional Approaches

Diminishing returns from pushy product pitches signal readiness for change. Commoditization also challenges companies lacking differentiation.

Leadership must honestly evaluate strategy objectively. Does data show overreliance on slick features and discounts versus true value? Underperformance indicates needing an updated approach.

Willingness to Invest Time in Relationships

Consultative selling only works when salespeople are devoted to customer partnerships over efficiency. That takes longer nurturing cycles.

Assess whether reps are motivated to elevate relationship building as their primary responsibility. Those unwilling to slow down may struggle adopting consultative mentalities.

Focus on Long-Term Customer Success

Consultative sellers measure success through customer growth and satisfaction versus monthly sales targets. They prioritize lifetime account value over immediate payoffs.

Teams fixated on quick payouts must broaden perspectives. Otherwise the focus required for consultative seller-buyer partnerships never fully materializes.

Key Metrics to Track with Consultative Selling

To quantify its impact, track metrics related to:

Increased Deal Sizes

• Average contract/order value
• Total contract value for new business
• Average customer lifetime revenue
• Average price per user (SaaS)
• Willingness-to-pay rates
• Proposal acceptance rates

Growth in Customer Lifetime Value

• Increase in average lifetime value per customer
• Growth of client spend over time
• Upsells and cross-sells to existing customers
• Expansion of share-of-wallet

Reduced Customer Churn

• Lower customer turnover and loss rates
• Higher customer retention rates
• Increase in client tenure before canceling
• Decline in churn percentage quarter-over-quarter

Higher Win Rates for Qualified Leads

• Improved lead-to-customer conversion rates
• Shorter sales cycles and decision velocity
• Higher win percentages for qualified opps

Questions to Ask When Researching Prospects

Prep sales conversations with insights into prospects’ environments through questions like:

• What are your main pain points?
• How do you measure success?
• What solutions have you tried?
• What does your decision process look like?
• Who influences purchasing decisions?
• What would ideal solutions achieve for you?
• What does your tech stack currently include?
• How are you currently handling [X]?
• Where do bottlenecks occur in your workflows?
• What KPIs matter most to your role?

Thoughtful research questions demonstrate your interest in understanding their unique needs and goals. The insights allow you to tailor consultative proposals specifically addressing their problems and desired outcomes.

Tangible Benefits to Highlight in Consultative Sales Pitches

When proposing consultative solutions, quantify value in terms of:

Time Savings

• Labor hours saved per week/month
• Faster completion of key workflows
• Accelerated decision velocity
• Increased sales representative capacity

Revenue Growth

• Additional leads generated
• Higher customer conversion rates
• Larger average deal sizes
• Shorter sales cycles

Operational Efficiencies

• Reduced research/administration labor
• Streamlined workflows
• Lower customer support costs
• Improved resource utilization

Cost Reductions

• Decreased spend on current solutions
• Lowered research, software and overhead costs
• Savings from rightsizing resources

Risk Mitigation

• Reduced compliance and liability exposures
• Protection from cyberthreats
• Minimized supply chain disruptions
• Increased data accuracy and security

Quantifying benefits taps into prospects’ emotions, not just logic. Data-driven ROI spotlights your commitment to their tangible success.

Consultative selling focuses on building trusted relationships by deeply understanding customer needs first before promoting solutions. Key principles include:

• Prioritizing long-term partnerships over one-off sales
• Developing nuanced awareness of prospects’ goals and challenges through research and discovery
• Crafting highly customized proposals addressing unique needs
• Establishing credibility by sharing insights not selling pitches
• Maintaining consistent nurturing and engagement throughout sales cycles
• Welcoming objections as opportunities for improvement
• Measuring success through customer growth and satisfaction

This partnership-focused approach drives loyalty, larger deal sizes, recurring business, and referrals over time. Consultative selling succeeds by aligning the provider’s success with customers’ own desired outcomes.

Mastering consultative selling requires hiring for softer skills like emotional intelligence, curiosity, and patience. Ongoing training develops competencies like active listening, strategic questioning, and presenting compelling customized solutions.

Technology like CRM, analytics, and AI augment human abilities to deliver consultative experiences at scale. But relationships sit at the core.

The consultative approach struggles with rapid commoditization and churn. Taking time to cultivate partnerships insulates from price wars. As authenticity and trust become more scarce commodities, consultative selling emerges as a competitive differentiator for creating lifetime customers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the main benefits of consultative selling?

The consultative approach builds trust and loyalty, increases perceived value, improves customer retention, generates larger deal sizes, creates referrals and repeat business, and provides a competitive edge.

How does the consultative sales process differ from traditional selling?

Consultative selling prioritizes understanding prospects, while traditional selling pitches products. Consultative approaches focus on long-term partnerships rather than one-off transactions.

What makes someone skilled at consultative selling?

Key skills include active listening, strong communication, product/industry expertise, rapport building, presentation abilities, and strategic questioning. Developing genuine customer advocacy mindsets also drives success.

How much should a salesperson listen vs. speak during consultative selling?

Experts recommend listening 70-80% of the time during initial consultative conversations. Speaking should focus on asking thoughtful questions more than pitching.

How can you build trust and credibility during the consultative process?

Being transparent, delivering value, making authentic connections, consistently following up, admitting weaknesses, and sharing relevant insights builds trust and credibility with prospects.

What tools can enhance consultative selling success?

CRM, analytics, email tracking , and AI provide insights to personalize interactions. Omnichannel messaging and digital tools facilitate consultative experiences at scale.

How should sales leaders support adopting consultative approaches?

Executive sponsorship, aligned incentives, hiring practices emphasizing soft skills, and ongoing training and messaging promote consultative selling adoption.

What are signs sales teams are ready to transition to consultative selling?

Indicators include struggling with transactional approaches, willingness to invest in relationships, focusing on customer lifetime value, and possessing foundational consultative skills.

How can the impact of consultative selling be measured?

Key performance indicators include customer retention, recurring business, referral rates, deal sizes, lifetime value, churn, win rates, and sales cycle velocity.

How to Master Consultative Selling: Principles, Strategies, and Examples

Casey O'Connor

What Is Consultative Selling?

Benefits of a consultative sales approach, consultative selling vs. solution selling, the consultative sales process, consultative selling principles, examples of consultative selling, consultative selling strategies for success, consultative sales skills to master.

Consultative selling  is an effective approach to sales that is centered around the customer and their needs.

Contrary to a more traditional sales approach (sometimes known as “transactional selling”), consultative selling shifts the focus away from the product’s features and benefits and instead focuses on asking customers open-ended questions , building rapport , and tailoring the product offer around their unique pain points.

While this methodology is sometimes considered “untraditional,” many salespeople actually find that the process comes more naturally to them than a standard sales pitch.

Becoming skilled in consultative selling is simply a matter of understanding the concept and practicing the process — all of which we’ll go over in this article.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Qualify more leads, more efficiently
• Create authentic, trusting, mutually beneficial relationships with clients (which leads to lots of repeat business and referrals)
• Seamlessly solve clients’ problems and help drive their businesses forward

Consultative Sales Explained

In today’s digital age, customers have access to more information than ever . Researching, comparing, and crowdsourcing reviews can all be done quickly and easily online.

As a result, salespeople are interacting with potential customers much later in the sales process than in decades past. In fact, many customers are making purchasing decisions without ever needing to speak to a salesperson at all. 

This is where consultative selling really shines because the process is all about building rapport and earning your client’s trust . 

The goal of this approach is not to push your product onto the customer, and they take it or leave it — but instead, to ask thought-provoking questions, empathize with their concerns, and allow them to steer the decision-making process .  

Many sales reps find that they naturally gravitate toward a consultative selling approach, even if it isn’t necessarily their organization’s officially prescribed sales methodology . That’s because it has significant and tangible benefits for both buyer and sales rep.

Buyer Benefits

The consultative selling approach is, by design, hyper-sensitive to and focused on the customer’s needs. It emphasizes strong, authentic buyer-seller relationships, which naturally generate high levels of customer satisfaction across accounts. 

On a bigger picture scale, consultative selling also improves the buyer’s business and their industry as a whole.

Because consultative selling enables sales reps to become deeply in tune with their buyers’ needs, the approach empowers marketing and sales organizations to truly perfect their product according to the needs of the market, and tailor their campaigns to attract clients who will fully benefit from it.

Seller Benefits

It should come as no surprise that consultative sellers who have a comprehensive understanding of customers’ needs usually create a loyal and profitable base of satisfied customers that are eager to make referrals.

And sellers with this kind of success generally really enjoy what they do.

That’s one of the biggest benefits to sales reps who practice consultative selling: it fosters a sales environment that empowers and enables sales reps to connect with the customer, add value, and create the kind of mutually beneficial relationships that make for a great sales career. 

It also helps sellers in many tangible ways:

• More productive customer meetings that quickly get to the heart of what the customer truly needs
• Increased brand awareness and credibility in the market 
• Shorter sales cycles
• Better awareness of and insight into customer behavior

All of these benefits, of course, ultimately coalesce to generate a better overall bottom line: more closed-won deals, more high-value accounts, and more revenue.

To some, consultative may sound very similar to solution selling . That’s not a bad comparison — the two do share many similarities. In fact, the roots of the consultative selling approach actually come from solution selling. 

Both methodologies emphasize prospect over product. And both position the seller as the industry expert who can help the buyer determine how to best approach their problem.

Consultative selling, on the other hand, is intended to offer a more holistic approach to buyer needs. This methodology assumes that the buyer doesn’t just need a solution; in actuality, they need education and resources that can help them understand the full scope of their problem and choose their best solution accordingly. 

With a consultative approach, the prospect may or may not buy at the end of the sales cycle — and that doesn’t necessarily mean it was done wrong. The true mark of a successful consultative sales approach is the creation of a trusting , value-based, and long-term relationship between the prospect and sales rep. 

According to consultative selling, it’s this relationship — not the solution itself — that is the key to securing future deals, expanding existing accounts, and generating referrals .

Step 1: Research (and Then Research Some More)

Of course, researching your potential client’s company is a no-brainer, and should be a key aspect of any sales approach.

Spend time on their company website, LinkedIn , and social media. Check out their online reviews. You might even gather some intel about their competitors to see what sets them apart. These tidbits are all important and will help you build important foundational knowledge about the customer.

It may sound silly, but a consultative seller is a bit like a therapist .

A therapist’s job is to listen carefully to your concerns, learn about your history and background, and use both of those things to create a custom treatment plan.

A good therapist would never just write a generic prescription and call it a day — you would likely fire them if they did so. Their job is to learn as much about you as they can, so that they can tailor and target the treatment they provide. The more the therapist knows about your motivations, fears, and current and past events in your life, the better they’re able to help you push through barriers and solve problems. 

Thankfully, your job as a consultative sales rep is a lot less personal! No need to swap sixth-grade horror stories, but the client should walk away feeling heard, understood, and like you have a keen interest in helping them. Effective research will help you get there.

Step 2: Ask (the Right) Questions

Most consumers can spot a sales pitch from a mile away — stay away from questions that are poorly designed segways into your product. Nobody likes being sold to.

And while you’re at it, get rid of anything that can be answered with “yes” or “no.”

But as long as you remain respectful and professional, try not to worry about overstepping — it’s human nature to want to talk about yourself, and most clients will jump at the chance to talk about their business to someone who shows interest in listening.

Open-Ended Questions

Here are some open-ended questions to try on your next consultative sales call:

Tell me about what you’re looking to accomplish. What challenges have you faced in the past when trying to accomplish this? Have you tried to solve this problem in the past? How did it go? What worries do you have about facing this challenge?

Follow-up questions are also super helpful, and can often get even the toughest nuts to crack open (where appropriate, of course — remember to be genuine and only ask questions when it makes sense to do so).

Here are some follow-up questions:

I heard you say X . Can you tell me more about that? Why do you think that is? What is your thought process behind X ? Is there anything we haven’t discussed yet that you’d like me to understand about your business needs?

Notice that these questions are open-ended, probing (but not overly personal), and — most importantly — entirely focused on the customer. Asking the right questions will build trust and an eagerness to move forward.

Step 3: Active Listening

Heads up — this part is deceptively tricky, and probably more nuanced than you think.

The first (and easy) part: try to listen at least twice as much as you talk. Pretty straightforward and easy to achieve with a little willpower and practice.

The next part, however, is often overlooked. Many salespeople claim to be great listeners, but the reality could not be farther from the truth. 

“Listening” the way we’re talking about here isn’t just about hearing the client’s answers and coming up with a response on the fly. 

The kind of listening we’re talking about is a bit more involved. It requires:

• Hearing what the client is saying
• Showing a genuine interest in understanding their concerns
• Quickly synthesizing what they’re saying with what you already know, and using both pieces to read between the lines
• Problem-solving directly within the sales conversation

For better or for worse, somewhere along the line, the traditional sales model adopted a pushier and less personal approach — which is why active listening within a sales context can feel a bit unnatural. But a little practice goes a long way!

Step 4: Qualify Prospect

As you ask the prospect thoughtful questions, listen carefully to their answers. This is the sales rep’s opportunity to qualify the prospect and determine how well-matched they are to the solution. 

In particular, the two areas that sales reps need to qualify carefully are decision-making power and budget. 

As the conversation develops, be sure to confirm that the prospect with whom you’re speaking has decision-making power in their organization. If not, try to tactfully find a way to ask to be connected with someone who does. 

It’s also important to understand the prospect’s budget needs. Keep in mind that money is one of the most common sales objections , so don’t be surprised if the initial budget conversation has a tone of resistance and concern. As a consultative sales rep, it’s up to you to thoroughly understand the prospect’s needs, their resources, and the ways in which you can package your solution to meet those specifications. 

Trying to close unqualified prospects is a waste of time and effort. The small amount of extra planning and conversation that it takes to qualify can save hours, days, or even weeks’ worth of work. 

Step 5: Inform/Collaborate

In some cases, this might mean offering knowledge. It could also mean coming up with a strategy on the fly, or even providing referrals that aren’t directly related to your product. In other words, don’t shy away from sharing something that’s helpful, related, and valuable — but try to do so without giving away the product or service for free.

When done properly, taking on the role of consultant or a trusted advisor before you’re technically hired as such will pay off. Think of it like giving a free sample at the grocery store; if you’re confident in your offer, let them have a taste. Chances are, they’ll want the whole package.

This step is also where you can begin speaking directly to your product or service, but take care to avoid the standard old list of features or benefits.

Instead, craft your talking points specifically around the concerns the client has already shared with you. If one of the features of your product is integration with Gmail, but your client uses Outlook, skip that part. The feature may be great — maybe even the top-selling point — but bringing it up will make the client feel like you haven’t listened at all. 

Between your research, questioning, and active listening, you will have created a client puzzle, of sorts. But the puzzle is missing just a few pieces. Those missing pieces are their pain points . Your job is to take your product and shape it into the exact shape of those missing puzzle pieces for your client. 

Step 6: Close

In an ideal world, all of your deals would close seamlessly after all of that listening, understanding, and solution-providing. In reality, though, that won’t always be the case. You may or may not close the sales at the end of the conversation.

And that’s okay .

Consultative selling isn’t about how many deals you close in a week, or how much each contract is worth. You need to be in it for the long game — remember, the point is not the product, but the relationship . Your success should be measured by how well you were able to meet your client’s needs.

The biggest mistake most salespeople make with this approach is trying to close too soon. The reality is, it takes a while to close:

The close should feel natural and mutually beneficial — if it doesn’t, it’s not the right time to close. Either it’s not a good fit in general (that’s okay too!), or the prospect needs more time.

In that case, be patient. Feel free to follow up with a friendly and professional email, but leave the last-minute sales pitch out. Instead, briefly recap the conversation and let the client know that your door is always open for further discussion.

Many times, the decision-maker simply needs time to consider the offer and will end up moving forward. And even if you don’t end up closing the deal, you’ve now formed a solid professional relationship that could always become fruitful in the future.

Tip: Grab some data-backed findings below to enhance your consultative sales process.

The consultative selling approach relies heavily on a trusting relationship between buyer and seller. It requires the seller to maintain control over the course of the conversation without making the prospect feel coerced or influenced. 

1. Keep an Eye on Your Give and Take

It’s natural for consultative sellers to feel eager to ask an exhaustive list of questions. After all, a consultative selling approach requires sales reps to have a deep understanding of the buyer’s problem and specific needs.

But reps should take caution against asking too many questions, or with too much intensity. The wrong tone here can quickly make a sales meeting feel like an interrogation, and that will get in the way of building trust. 

Instead, make sure you take the time to offer insight throughout the conversation alongside your list of questions. Valuable, tangible insights offered with no strings attached go a long way in building your credibility and likeability, and earn you the right to ask deeper, more thought-provoking questions as your rapport grows. 

2. Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

In a sales world that’s increasingly digital/remote, it can be hard for sales reps to build trust and credibility from behind a screen. One way to achieve this is by being mindful that your actions line up with your words and intentions. 

Sellers can achieve this by doing things like following up when they say they will or referencing specific insights or anecdotes that the buyer previously shared during a conversation. These small but powerful gestures show sellers that you mean what you say, and that you’re invested in them as a person with real problems — not just what they can do for your quota.

3. Be Genuine, Approachable, and Eager to Help

It’s important to maintain professionalism, but make sure to balance that formality with an air of genuine friendliness and approachability. 

Be enthusiastic about what you’re selling. Talk about your product with conviction — especially the way it helps people solve problems. Just make sure you maintain honesty and integrity, and be careful not to brag. Go for confidence and capability, not arrogance and bravado. 

4. Preparation Precedes Control

One of the cornerstones of consultative selling is a sales rep’s ability to maintain control of the sales conversation . The best way to ensure this control is through careful preparation in advance of sales conversations. 

Sales reps should come prepared to prove their product’s effectiveness with several anecdotes and real-life examples of relevant case studies and testimonials. When sales reps can assert confidence in their offer, and then hand over data to back it up, it demonstrates credibility. 

Just remember to make sure you don’t cross the line into pushiness or dominance. 

5. Be Open to Feedback

From a consultative seller’s perspective, there’s no such thing as bad feedback. Every sales objection is an opportunity to learn more and further personalize a solution to the buyer’s needs. 

Frequently take time to check in with the prospect to learn more about their perspective, and take notes on what they share. This feedback can help you make connections and draw insights that the buyer themself may not even be aware of. 

6. Practice Active Listening

Consultative selling is a customer-centric process. The most important part of the approach is that sellers develop a deep, thorough understanding of what a prospect needs and values in a solution. 

Sellers can use active listening skills to help them get the information they need to tailor a solution for each buyer. Active listening helps buyers trust that they and their needs matter to the seller.

The process is simple but can take some practice. Here are a few examples of consultative selling in action. Notice that there are a variety of outcomes — this approach doesn’t always take a Point A to Point B route, but it does always end up with a very happy customer. 

1. A Simple Tip Goes a Long Way

An energy-based SaaS company is working with a large city to cut their municipal buildings’ energy costs. The client approaches the seller with the belief that they would need to re-outfit their buildings with an entirely new electrical system. 

Through effective questioning, the sales rep learns that the city is losing a large chunk of money by over-utilizing their hot water heater during peak usage times — a problem that could easily be solved by simply shifting their bulk usage time by an hour. The sales rep offers this advice (for free, and independent of the service the client requested) and then goes on to speak on additional tactics and savings that could be achieved through a handful of their programs. He also speaks to the pros and cons of re-outfitting the electrical system as originally requested by the client.

As he presents the various programs, he speaks directly to the concerns shared by the client earlier in the conversation. This helps the client feel heard, helped, and in control, leading him to eventually opt into two of the services suggested by the rep before re-outfitting the buildings.

2. Overdeliver by Underselling

A small business blog was struggling to make sense of their engagement data. The blogger reached out to a conversion optimization agency for help, her main concern being her excessively high bounce rate. She approached the agency with the intention of utilizing their copywriting and web design services to hopefully entice people to stay longer on her page.

Although the blogger had already accurately pinpointed her issue — the bounce rate — the salesperson asked some follow-up questions. 

Follow-up Questions:

• What were her thoughts on the copy, as it was currently? Did she like it, or did she think it could be better? 
• Was she happy with her current web design? 
• Did she know what people were doing once they got to her blog — were they scrolling at all? Getting stuck somewhere?

These were questions that the sales rep could have easily forgone. Instead, he dug a little deeper to get a full picture. The conversation was an easy back-and-forth and somewhat off-the-cuff, going with the flow until all bases were covered.

In learning that the blogger really didn’t want to hire another web designer or copywriter — she was quite happy with the current design, and believed that her writing should be authentically her own — the sales rep suggested leaving the web design and copy as-was, at least in the short term.

Instead, he suggested that the blogger use their heat map analysis service for a month to further diagnose the bounce rate problem. The blogger agreed, and in turn, learned that about 60% of her visitors were experiencing pop-up problems immediately upon arriving at her page. Problem solved!

While this may not seem like an outright win for the sales rep, it actually couldn’t have gone better from a consultative sales perspective. The rep didn’t “close the deal” — he didn’t sell the more expensive copywriting or web design services — but he did build rapport , and a really solid foundation for a trusted client/provider relationship.

The blogger now knows that this agency truly has her success in mind, and also cared enough to ask about and honor her personal preferences for her business. It’s highly likely this customer will consult with the agency for all of her future marketing needs. 

3. Expertise Is Priceless

An Amazon FBA seller reached out to a manufacturer for a quote for a new product he was hoping to launch. Before providing the requested quote, the manufacturer asked the Amazon seller where he planned to sell the product, and what the product market currently looked like. In hearing the market conditions, the supplier was able to recommend an easily sourced bonus product that could be added at very little extra cost.

The supplier was also able to provide a couple of case studies of other sellers who had done the same, which increased their sales significantly.

Imagine the impression this “sales call” made on the Amazon seller. It would have been much easier for the supplier to crunch the numbers, put the quote in front of the client, and hope for the best.

Instead, with just a couple of simple, open-ended questions, he showed the client:

• He’s highly knowledgeable about the market
• He’s genuinely interested in seeing the seller succeed
• He has great business sense, and could potentially be a valuable asset to the seller’s business

It would be hard to imagine a scenario in which this client didn’t move forward with this particular manufacturer. 

Keep these tips in mind to hone in on your consultative selling strategies!

1. Be Curious

Remember to aim for open-ended questions. This is an instance in which immediate digital access to information presents a challenge — what kinds of questions can you reasonably ask someone when you can find the answer to just about any of them online?

The key here is curiosity . Behave like an investigator, not an interviewer. Instead of asking questions to checkboxes, consider asking questions that don’t have right or wrong answers. Your job is to synthesize the information, read between the lines, pinpoint the problem — and then craft your offer as the solution to their highly unique circumstances.

2. Be Authentic

As we mentioned, it goes a long way in the eyes of your client to be an expert . You want them to see you as an authority on not only your product but also the field in general. And offering value, as we discussed above, is a great way to do that.

But offering your expertise can be a slippery slope. If you go too heavy on “expert,” you run the risk of seeming too authoritative, too braggy, or — worst of all — a phony.

The antidote to these pitfalls? Be authentic. Both in acknowledging the pain points and in wanting to solve them.

Be authentic in your offer to share some knowledge at no cost. Be authentic in the conviction that you are your clients’ trusted consultant, and that you have their best interest in mind — even those of your clients who still fall in the “potential” category. 

3. Follow-Up

Remember, the consultative sales approach requires more time and patience than the more traditional methodology. It’s easy to get invested in every relationship — that’s the nature of the process.

4. Lead With a Willingness to Help

Those hoping to adopt a consultative mindset should work to maintain a mindset of assisting buyers and solving problems. 

A consultative strategy only works if sellers can delay the satisfaction of closing the deal in favor of ensuring the buyer feels completely heard. 

The more a sales rep can show they’re committed to meeting buyers’ needs, the more open those buyers will be. 

5. Go In With a Plan

Remember — consultative selling requires intentional and methodical research in advance of every sales conversation. Use that research to help you create a loose framework for your meetings, and let the buyer know what you plan to discuss. 

Of course, remember that this is ultimately all about the customer — if they need to go off script, give them the space they need to help them feel heard. But keep in mind that your job is to position yourself as an expert. Lead and guide the conversation in a way that helps the buyer and seller understand one another on a deeper level. 

6. Understand Buyer Psychology

Consultative selling requires a deep understanding of human psychology, especially when it comes to the buying process. 

Sales reps who practice this sales methodology know that all humans have a need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness — and this is especially true when it comes to decision-making and purchasing power. They can use this knowledge to design their sales process around those core needs. 

7. Keep an Open Mind

Make sure you keep an open mind while you’re listening to prospects, and allow them to speak about their concerns candidly and with trust that you can handle their frustration. 

Don’t push back against anything you hear, even if you believe the buyer is misinformed about what they need; practice active listening and remember that the buyer’s truth is the most valuable piece of information you need when crafting your value proposition.

8. Utilize Facts

One thing that consultative sellers need to be mindful of is the human tendency to operate based on underlying assumptions rather than facts. This is one example of anchoring , the psychological principle in which people rely too heavily on one piece of information, causing them to miss other valuable information as they focus on the singular “anchor” detail. 

For sales reps, anchoring sometimes looks like attaching too strongly to their own assumptions about a prospect or their offer. 

Remember, active listening is one of the most important skills for a sales rep to master. It can help prevent anchoring and encourage the conversation to focus on facts shared directly from the prospect. Many sales reps also find that providing educational materials throughout the sales process can help structure conversations around facts instead of opinions and assumptions. 

One thing to note: as you listen to gather facts, you may notice that the prospect seems to contradict themselves or offer conflicting information. This can be a normal part of the consultative selling process, as both parties dig very deep to determine the best-fit solution. But it’s up to the seller to be a keen listener, identify those discrepancies, and (respectfully) get to the bottom of them. If you approach this task with the right mindset, it can make a great impression on the prospect regarding your listening and critical thinking skills.

Consultative selling takes time and practice to master. As you practice this sales approach in the field, be mindful of the following skills. Each of them will improve all aspects of the consultative sales process.

Be an Expert in Your Industry

Successful consultative sellers know how to present themselves as experts in their industry. 

The first step in achieving this is to become an actual expert — buyers will be able to spot phony expertise a mile away. Spend time reading articles, newsletters, and press releases about happenings in your industry. Listen to podcasts and webinars. Attend seminars and networking events. LinkedIn is also a goldmine of industry knowledge and recent events. Be hungry for knowledge about your field; this will translate into the sales process. 

(To go the extra step, do the same kind of research for the prospect’s industry, too.) 

It’s also important, though, that you use your expertise wisely. There’s a fine line between someone who’s very knowledgeable and someone who’s a know-it-all. Take care with the way you share your insights. 

One way to navigate this balance is to treat the prospect like your equal in terms of expertise. Assume that they’ve done their research just as much as you have; your job is to teach them how to use their knowledge to make educated purchasing decisions. 

Social proof , like case studies and testimonials, can also go a long way in helping you seem credible and trustworthy. 

Master Your CRM

Consultative selling requires sales reps to track and manage a ton of prospect data, which needs to be immediately available to them throughout sales conversations. 

It’s also important that everyone on your consultative selling team is on the same page about the CRM expectations. 

Learn How to Control and Guide the Conversation

This is another area of nuance for consultative sellers: controlling the conversation. 

While it’s true that consultative sales reps should listen more than they talk, they also need to have a clear idea in mind of where the conversation needs to flow to get the information they need. This requires intentional pre-call preparation, as well as an ability to think on-the-go for effective follow-up questions. 

It’s a good idea to be clear about your intentions for the conversation before you begin. This will help get you and the prospect on the same page and allow room for polite redirection if things get off track.

As mentioned above, an understanding of how human psychology works can also help you guide the conversation. Humans, for example, feel most motivated when they feel autonomy, competence, and relatedness to others. 

If you can guide the conversation in a way in which the prospect feels all three of those self-perceptions, they will be more likely to be motivated to purchase.

Remember — while a conversation outline is helpful, sales scripts should not be used in consultative selling (at least, not word-for-word). The conversation should feel natural and unforced, no matter how well you’ve prepared. 

Build Your Personal Brand

Part of being a great consultative seller is having a “way” about yourself. It’s something that’s hard to define, but easy to spot. After all, a lot of consultative success derives from how prospects perceive the sales rep. 

Some people refer to this as a seller’s “personal brand.”

To create this, it’s important to really dive into your industry and get to know your target markets. Think critically about the current state of your field, and form your own opinions. Share your thoughts on LinkedIn. Be outgoing at networking events. The more you can “come into your own,” the more successful you will be as a consultative seller.

Still, though, keep in mind — there is a fine line between being confident in your opinions and knowledge, and being too self-important. The first part of any consultative seller’s personal brand should be to help first. 

Know Everything About Your Product/Solution

In addition to being an expert in their industry, consultative sellers also need to be top-to-bottom experts on their solutions. The more you understand the ins and outs of your product or service, the more easily you can make a personalized connection to each prospect’s pain points. 

According to LinkedIn , the top three reasons for deals dying all relate to how well a sales rep understands their product in relation to a prospect’s unique needs. 

A successful consultative seller can convert their extensive product knowledge into a personalized solution for the prospect at hand.

This guide was updated on December 5, 2023.

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Consultative Selling Process: Examples, Benefits & Techniques

The highest-paid and most successful sales professionals are involved in consultative selling .

Today’s modern buyers don’t want to be sold to, they want sales professionals to know their needs and give them tangible, personalized solutions to their problems.

What is Consultative Selling?

Consultative sales focus on meeting the needs of customers by getting to know them and building a trusting relationship with them. 

A consultative salesperson acts as an expert consultant to their customer, asking questions to identify their needs and choosing the ideal solution that will benefit the customer the most.

This sales strategy is also called “needs-based selling” since it focuses on meeting customer needs wherever they are in their buyer journey. Instead of pushing a product, sales reps use skills like active listening, asking questions, building trust, and finding solutions.

The consultative selling approach will help you move to the very top of your field. It is a valuable tool that is indispensable in dealing with complex sales and accounts where many factors are involved and competition is a key factor.

Consultative Selling vs. Transactional Selling

Transactional selling is the traditional type of selling process in which the buyer purchases a product or service because they already know what they want. Almost all one-time sales fall into this category, and many repeat sales do too.

An example of a transactional sale is a purchase at a grocery store, newspaper stand, or online clothing store. But it also involves sales professionals making a sales pitch and closing a sale.

In the transactional selling process, the sales rep often uses negotiation tactics to make a quick sale, such as limited-time offers, buy one get one free, and deep discounts. 

Instead of building a relationship, such as in the consultative sales approach, the focus is more on one-off purchases from potential customers.

In contrast, consultative sales professionals approach company decision-makers and have sales conversations with them to determine how their product or service can best suit the buyer’s needs.

Consultative Selling vs. Solution Selling

Consultative selling and solution selling are similar sales approaches but they have subtle differences. In fact, solution selling is a type of consultative selling.

Both approaches put the customer first and focus on finding solutions to their needs. However, whereas the main purpose of the solution-selling approach is to find solutions for the customer, consultative selling focuses on building long-term relationships with customers before offering solutions.

A solution seller will assume potential customers need to be educated about the solutions available, but a consultative seller finds out what the customer already knows and adds to their knowledge with information relevant to a prospect’s pain point or need.

Benefits of Using a Consultative Sales Approach

Consultative selling creates lasting relationships with your customers, turning potential customers into long-term returning customers.

This sales approach builds trust between you and your customer and between your customer and your brand.

The consultative sales approach turns your sales team into problem solvers as you strive to give long-term solutions to your customers instead of focusing on immediate buying power. 

Today’s buyers do not want to be told what to buy. Instead, they want to work in collaboration with those who can provide solutions to their business needs and help them reach their goals.

Consultative sellers help business owners and other decision-makers gain new perspectives by educating them about things they do not already know but can benefit them.

A consultative seller is seen as a trusted advisor that customers return to on an ongoing basis. As a sales professional, you work hand in hand with the consumer, drawing on their knowledge and yours to create solutions that benefit customer needs. This creates loyalty, which often translates to more business for you.

This sales technique is best when you’re looking for long-term, ongoing future sales as opposed to quick, one-time purchases.

Essential Consultative Selling Skills and Techniques

There are certain skills you must possess when using a consultative sales approach. Consider the following consultative selling techniques you can use to get the best results for your customers.

Know Your Customer

In consultative selling, it’s important you know exactly who your customer is and how to identify their wants and needs. It requires you to think of yourself differently as a salesperson and position yourself as an advisor.

Your focus should be to get your customer’s financial results rather than the performance or price relationship. This is the difference between the perception of being a sales advisor vs a salesperson who is just trying to sell a product or service.

To gain a thorough understanding of your customer’s needs, you must conduct in-depth research. The most successful sales professionals spend at least six hours a week researching their prospective clients.  

Learn your prospect’s pain points, business challenges, mission statement, and company goals so you and your sales team can help them find the best solution to each issue.

One of the key variables in consultative sales is your knowledge of your customer’s business process. You must learn everything you can about the customer’s business before you even suggest a solution or course of action.

When selling to businesses, learn how sales are generated through conducting research. What are the primary products or services sold by the customer’s company? How much are they sold for? What is the total sales volume? What kind of sales results are they enjoying? How are the profits generated?

Be Customer-Centric

Once you know the customer—whether they’re a potential customer or an existing customer—one of the most important consultative selling skills is to have an intense focus on their needs, rather than your financial goals as a sales rep.

Understand that your customers want to save or gain time or money, and your consultative selling approach should look to solve these things. Modern buyers want to achieve this goal in a cost-effective way, which means your value propositions must be customer-focused by offering tailored solutions to their needs.

In consultative sales, when you demonstrate to a customer that your product will pay for itself quickly and dependably and then generate a net profit for a considerable time after it has paid for itself, the sale will almost take care of itself.

Remember that with the consultative selling approach,  the relationship is the most important part of selling . It creates both customer loyalty and customer satisfaction.

Practice Questioning and Active Listening

Two vital consultative sales skills you need include asking questions and practicing active listening. This habit will always put you at a competitive advantage.

Sales calls and visits with consultative selling are far more interactive than traditional selling. When interacting with a client, top sales professionals spend 46% of their time talking and 54% listening .  

As you go through the consultative sales process, you provide insights to your prospects and customers as you actively listen to their answers to your questions.

You ask, “Have you ever thought of doing it this way?” or “What if we were to approach it from this point of view?” or “Did you realize that it’s now possible to achieve your goals using this method or this technology?”

In other words, you don’t tell people what to do, you provide insights to demonstrate your expertise and open the customer to the possibility that working with you can make a big difference.

Lead the Conversation

A consultant is a problem detective. What you’re doing is asking questions to find out if a potential customer has a problem or need that your special expertise can help solve.

Compare this to when you go to a doctor. The first thing a doctor does is conduct a complete examination and health inventory.

The doctor doesn’t recommend a prescription or a course of treatment when they first see you. Instead, they ask you a lot of questions and do a lot of tests. Only then do they come back with a diagnosis and say, “This is what I think your situation is, and these are the alternatives that we have to deal with your situation.”

Take the lead in every conversation you have with your client by asking open-ended questions. Not everyone will offer meaningful answers right away, but with the consultative approach, it is your job to keep the conversation going.

Draw on your research about the client and your knowledge about the prospect’s industry to know which targeted questions to ask. You will find your customer interactions result in essential information that can help you find solutions that lead to more deals.

Be Authentic

Foster a genuine interest in your clients.

One of the things that consultants do is think about their clients in terms of the long term. They see their clients as friends. They see their clients as people that they will work with for months and even years in order to help them improve their lives and work with their special qualifications.

I often have sales reps ask me how to  overcome the fear of rejection when making cold calls or meeting with prospective clients. The consultative selling process eliminates the fear of rejection because your primary purpose is to build a genuine relationship, not to make an immediate sale.

Be authentic by constantly focusing on helping the client find solutions throughout the consultative sales process. Have genuine conversations and personalize prospect interactions by seeing things from their point of view.

You will also need to know your product or service thoroughly so you can naturally weave into the conversation ways you can help them, and then tweak your offerings to meet their unique needs.

Build Trust

Through these genuine, customer-centric conversations and interactions, consultative salespeople build trust, a key component of both relationship building and the sales process.

A consultative sales professional sees themself as a consultant, and a consultant has certain special qualities that make them different. One is consultants are professionals. They are people who are looking for people who have problems they can solve with their product or service.

If you suddenly swoop in and start making a hard sell or being aggressive in pushing your products, trust will diminish and you will lose clients.

Regardless of what part of the sales cycle your prospect is in, continue to focus on developing genuine long-lasting relationships that are mutually beneficial. You may not see immediate sales, but building trust often leads to future sales as well as referrals.

Focus on Solutions

Consultants provide customized solutions versus generic ones.

A customized solution in successful consultative selling is what we call a co-generated solution. The solution is generated in cooperation with a customer.

We don’t go in with a solution. Instead, once you understand the needs, problems, and difficulties of your client, you’ll be able to start making suggestions.

After a while, the solution that you and the client collaboratively come up with is completely privatized and completely personalized to that particular company.

Consultants are very focused on results, especially financial results.

When I built my network of professional training facilitators worldwide, I taught them that their job was profit improvement.

Their primary job was to go into a company and talk to the decision-makers and find out how they can use their service to help their company achieve or improve their financial results.

So we say you are a financial improvement specialist when you use the consultative approach.

Consultative Sales Process

Now that you know the consultative sales skills required to be a successful account executive in the needs-based selling arena, you are ready to learn the steps you must take in the consultative sales process. 

I will explain how to take your first steps in conducting initial research to having effective conversations, committing to sales, and following through with your contacts for long-lasting relationships.

1. Prepare & Do Your Research

In consultative sales, you must earn the trust of your customer by doing thorough preparation.

Consumers are more likely to buy from sales reps that understand their goals, yet most sales reps don’t bother to learn enough about their customer’s businesses.  

Study your prospect’s company in advance of your first meeting.

Take a bird’s eye view approach first, and then narrow your focus. Start by reviewing your potential customer’s website, from the About page to the products and services and blog articles to press releases and financial reports.

Continue by reading the company’s social media pages and paying attention to the frequency and types of posts and interactions they have with clients.

Discover who the leaders and decision-makers are, and read their LinkedIn profiles and social media accounts. Look for work history and personal blogs to get to know these leaders, which will help guide your future customer interaction.

The first meeting is your very best opportunity to demonstrate that you are the kind of person that your customer can have a relationship with.

2. Listen to Your Customer

Your customers expect you to understand their unique needs. Avoid falling into the common sales trap of not actively listening to your prospective clients.

Ask targeted questions and listen intently to your prospect’s answers. Instead of thinking of this as a sales conversation, focus on becoming a trusted friend that genuinely has the person’s best interest in mind.

Learn all you can about their needs by listening. Stay in tune with nonverbal cues as well. A client will let you know what their pain points are when their conversation becomes more exciting or frustrating.

Body language like leaning forward to speak more intently or using hand gestures to express themselves will cue you to what their most important needs are.

Your job as a consultative sales professional is to find solutions for your clients, and you can best do that by asking the right questions, actively listening, and developing solutions together.

3. Solve Their Biggest Problem

Through the listening process, you will understand the potential client’s needs and develop a sense of what their biggest problem is. Your goal is to solve that problem.

Successful sales leaders know their products and services well so they can offer effective solutions. A seller’s ability to match their offerings with a client’s needs results in more deals and greater customer loyalty.

Determine possible solutions and prepare to present them in quantifiable terms so your prospect can see the financial gains they can achieve. Consumers want to know how committing to a purchase will affect their bottom line and advance their business goals. Make it clear by calculating how much they might save or earn by committing to your suggested solution.

Never force a sale. If you cannot solve the client’s problems, continue your role as a trusted consultant. Genuine relationships foster referrals that can lead to additional sales success. Likewise, consultative selling is a continuous process that addresses new challenges your client may face in the future.

4. Present Them With Your Solution

When you know you can genuinely help the prospect meet their goals, educate them about your solution. Your role in this step of the consultative selling process is to be a teacher.

Use your industry knowledge to point out how similar solutions have worked for other companies or clients in the past. Draw on your experience with past or current clients to illustrate how your solution may be able to help them too.

Be sure to continue to present tailored solutions. Show the client how your solution can meet their specific needs and discuss the features and benefits of your solution that specifically apply to them.

5. Commit to the Sale

Once your reach this step in the consultative sales approach, sales conversation almost happens naturally.

Discuss the details of the solution and the timeline of costs, expected ROI, and net profit. Make sure you and your prospect are on the same page and then enter into a contract or agreement.

6. Follow Up & Nurture Your Relationship

Consultative sales is not a one-and-done approach to selling. Successful consultative sellers foster continuous, healthy relationships with clients, focusing on problem-solving and constantly keeping the client’s best interest in mind.

Follow up after each deal and ensure your client is satisfied. Discuss ongoing needs and new challenges that arise. Actively seek out your customer’s feedback and address concerns.

Likewise, the most successful sales organizations conduct ongoing discussions and sales training with their sales team to identify areas that need improvement in the sales process and foster aspects that are going well.

Consultative Selling Example

So how do you become a consultative salesperson?

Many years ago, I learned this from a consultative salesperson. He said the hardest part of becoming a consultant is having the courage to call yourself a consultant.

At the time, I was selling financial services investments, real estate, and other things. So after meeting him, I began to practice these words when I met with a client:

“Mr. Prospect, please relax, I’m not here to sell you anything. I see myself more as a consultant than as a salesperson, and all I would like to do today is ask you some questions and see if we can’t help you achieve your goals in a cost-effective way. Would that be okay?”

What I always found is people accept you at your own evaluation of yourself. If you tell the person you’re a consultant, they accept you as a consultant and then they wait to see if you perform as a consultant.

When you start to ask questions, take notes, ask follow-up questions, and give the client lots of opportunities to talk about their problems and difficulties as they relate to your services, they see you as a consultant and become wide open to accepting your advice.

Master the Consultative Sales Approach

You are now well on your way to mastering the consultative sales approach. As you apply the skills and steps of this sales process, you will be amazed at the success you will have and the satisfaction relationship-building sales bring to your career.

To further help you succeed, download my free  Ultimate Sales Presentation Template . It provides you with the simple software solutions you need to create compelling sales presentations that win over your prospects.

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About Brian Tracy — Brian is recognized as the top sales training and personal success authority in the world today. He has authored more than 60 books and has produced more than 500 audio and video learning programs on sales, management, business success and personal development, including worldwide bestseller The Psychology of Achievement. Brian's goal is to help you achieve your personal and business goals faster and easier than you ever imagined. You can follow him on Twitter , Facebook , Pinterest , Linkedin and Youtube .

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What Is Consultative Sales? Principles and Best Practices

Learn how to convert more leads — and create loyal customers — with the consultative sales approach.

Anita Nielsen

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Here’s the number one thing I ask sales reps who are having trouble closing a deal: “Have you asked the right questions?”

If you’re having trouble getting to the finish line on a sale, consider this: Asking the right questions helps you understand what matters to your buyer, and that’s how you can deliver value. This is sometimes called consultative sales. If you’re wondering where to begin, don’t worry. I’ll go over the basics of consultative sales so you can perfect your approach and help your customers succeed.

What you’ll learn:

What is consultative sales, consultative sales vs. solution sales, 5 principles of consultative sales, consultative sales process, level up your game with ai conversation insights.

Sell smarter using Einstein Conversation Insights — with customer signals and next-step guidance to help you close.

Consultative selling is a sales approach that focuses on understanding your customer’s challenges and recommending products or services to resolve them. Your role as a consultative sales professional is to empathize, advise, and advocate, not push a product. Customers should feel like you’re genuinely in their corner, treating their problems like your own.

Both of these concepts are similar – they focus on the customer’s needs first, instead of on the product. However, there are key differences to keep in mind. 

Consultative selling is about building trust and creating a plan to solve customer problems. Sales reps who use this approach try to understand the root cause of customer problems and find a solution. Even though it might not result in an immediate sale, this relationship-building technique helps reps earn the trust of prospects. In contrast, reps who use solution selling are looking to resolve customer issues with their company’s product(s). They focus their conversations and questions on uncovering problems that can be alleviated by what they are selling. 

Put another way: The mindset of a rep taking the solution-selling approach is, “I need to sell a solution.” But a consultative seller puts the customer’s goals first. Ahead of a sales call , they think about how they can help the customer achieve their goals.

The foundation of consultative selling is to gain a holistic understanding of your customer’s needs, objectives, and desired outcomes. To do this, you have to ask probing questions, listen, and learn so that you can advise them to your best ability on how they can achieve their goals. Here are five principles to keep in mind:

1. Be curious about their industry

Actively seek information about your customer’s industry to learn about trends, developments, and challenges they’re facing. Remember, consultative selling is about understanding customer needs, then finding a way to remedy them. That means you need to immerse yourself in their world. Here are some ways to get started:

• AI-powered insights: If your CRM has AI integration, use it to mine sales communications for relevant information, like recurring pain points or industry challenges.
• Customer research: Read industry newsletters, read job postings, and watch webinars. All of these can give you a look at what your customers care about.
• Social media: Follow industry-specific influencers on social media and listen to their perspectives. You can find influencers with a quick Google search (e.g. “sales influencers”), then see who they follow and start building your network.

2. Practice active listening

Active listening is when you really hear and absorb what your buyer says, reading between the lines and preparing to ask follow-up questions. You’re not just passively hearing them speak, you’re engaged. Give them enough time to share their thoughts, but be ready to jump in, follow up, and learn more. As a consultative seller, you’ll need to be able to think on your feet, so don’t rely too heavily on a script. Your goal is to paint a picture of their problem to find a solution that works.

This skill is essential for consultative sellers. When done well, you validate your customers’ feelings and uncover the deeper issues. In my experience, I’ve found that people tend to buy based on emotions. I ask open-ended questions that let the customer’s emotions naturally come into the conversation. For example, if they talk about a challenge they’re facing with frustration, ask about their experience to find out why they’re feeling stuck. What’s the roadblock? How is it impacting their business? What would they like to see improve? When you dig deep, you might uncover the real root of their problem. Then, you can work together on a solution that fits.

Navigating these conversations can be tricky. Here are some emotional cues to look for:

• Nonverbal behavior: Body language and facial expressions can reveal feelings like excitement, fear, frustration, or confusion, which you can address on the spot.
• Speaking cadence: People tend to talk faster when they’re passionate about something and slower if they’re uncertain or hesitant. Look for cadence cues like these to guide your responses.
• Language: Do the words you are hearing have a positive or negative connotation?  For example, if someone uses the word “cheap” versus “economical,” they probably don’t feel too positive about the thing they’re describing.

3. Research your prospects

Doing your research makes you more credible and can build trust with a buyer. It shows that you’re serious and dedicated to helping them and their business. To get started, explore your company’s buyer personas to familiarize yourself with the type of person you’ll likely be dealing with. While this detail is high-level, it will give you a sense of your prospect’s challenges and wants ahead of time. Next, read up on your prospect’s industry and company. I recommend using Reddit for user insights and Glassdoor for nuggets about a company’s culture and challenges. These are typically more honest sources than a company website, social media, or news article that’s been polished or editorialized.

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4. understand what’s valuable to your buyer.

Once you’ve done your research and discovery , you should be able to see what your customer values. Then, you can find a way to deliver it. The buyer’s perception of value often drives their buying decision. 

Maybe your customer gets a promotion if they onboard your CRM platform, which would help increase their company’s year-over-year revenue. The value realized in this case is a salary increase and upgraded status at their company. Or maybe your AI-based product helped your customer save time by automating tasks and increasing their productivity. The value here is in the form of reduced cost and increased operational efficiency, allowing them to invest in areas that have been neglected due to lack of time and funding.

Asking buyers about their business goals is table stakes. You need that detail to make your recommendation. But top performers go above and beyond to understand the buyer’s more personal goals. They want to learn what happens to the buyer if the issue is not addressed. What is the impact on them, professionally or personally? If you can uncover that value, you can add it to your pitch.

5. Ask high-impact questions

By now, you may have noticed a trend with these principles — consultative sales is about asking powerful questions. My advice is to avoid “yes” or “no” questions, as you want the customer to expand with their thoughts and opinions. The power of wide-open questions is that they allow emotions to seep into the conversation. I like to call these high-impact questions.

So instead of asking, “Who does your team report to?” try, “Can you help me understand your org structure?” This could spark a larger conversation about cross-departmental needs, organizational dynamics, and more personal challenges that will enable you to differentiate yourself. High-impact questions like this also typically result in greater opportunity to cross-sell and upsell. 

The stages of the consultative selling process are similar to the standard sales cycle with a key distinction: While the standard sales cycle tends to be transactional and accelerate toward closing a deal, the consultative sales process is more relational. It’s based on the notion that you have to slow down to understand the buyer’s context, and that’s what ultimately accelerates the deal in the end. Consultative selling is founded on trust. So this sales process is about earning that trust, not just inking your next deal.

Let’s say you work for Calls R Us selling call center software. You have a lead for a buyer, Max, who is the CIO at Awesome Outfits, an apparel retailer. After a recent acquisition, Awesome Outfits is thinking about modernizing its call center technology to handle its newly-increased call volume. Here’s a look at this process from a consultative sales perspective:

Step 1: Create a plan for your discovery call

You’ve booked a discovery sales call with Max and have researched him and his company. In preparation, you write up a call plan that clearly states your goal for the call and what is required to achieve it. Your plan might look something like this:

• List your desired outcome. In this case, you want to gain access to Max’s manager who makes all purchasing decisions for the company. For this to happen, Max must feel confident making the introduction.
• Ask high-impact questions. During the call with Max, you focus on open-ended questions. You gently probe, “Your company has been in acquisition mode. Tell me about the impact it’s had on you as a leader.”
• Actively listen and ask follow-up questions for more information. The answers Max gives might reveal some of the challenges he’s facing. Now you can tailor your guidance to address those pain points.
• Confirm next steps. Hearing about how your solution could help alleviate some of his pain points and support him as a leader, Max is excited to get the ball rolling. He feels comfortable making the introduction to his manager. You end the call by scheduling a demo with Max and his manager.

Step 2: Ask, listen, and learn

Have your next meeting with Max. Continue to follow up with him. Once you’ve built trust, ask for introductions to other members of his team. Through all of your interactions with Max, stick with the consultative sales tenets of asking high-impact questions, then stopping to listen actively to the answers. This way, you can uncover key pain points and find out what they value before you propose a solution.

Step 3: Create a tailored proposal

Write a personalized proposal for Awesome Outfits that uses the information you gathered to show differentiated value. It should include thoughtful recommendations that address the points Max made, and clearly illustrate how your services address his stated objectives. You can tailor the proposal by repeating ideas you’ve heard from Max and his teammates For example, if Max refers to his outdated call center as “using 1980s tech,” find a way to utilize those words in the proposal. This will make the proposal more relatable and show you’ve been listening carefully.

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Step 4: overcome the buyer’s objections.

It’s likely Max is not the only person at Awesome Outfits considering call center technology. Find out who the other stakeholders are and how you can get them on board with your offering. Ask questions and provide information to help Max navigate the internal objections he will likely encounter when you are not with him during internal conversations. 

Pricing is often an objection during the standard sales process . In a transactional sales process, there is limited focus on creating unique value. I don’t see objections to pricing as often in consultative sales, because the seller tailors their recommendation to what the buyer sees as valuable. In my experience, companies find the money for a product or service they see as valuable. However, if they do raise pricing concerns, go back to your meeting notes and talk through key points of value that the buyer shared. 

Step 5: Make a conscientious handoff after the sale

If you close the sale to Awesome Outfits, your next step is to pass it along to your internal team to execute on it. Usually, an implementation or customer success team will handle onboarding a new customer. Don’t drop the ball during this critical part of the game! You’ve built a trusted relationship with your client up to this point, and they chose to buy from you because of it. So, you want to ensure the handoff to the post-sale resources goes smoothly. Pass along detailed notes and advice to your internal team so they have everything they need to ensure the transition is as seamless as possible. Help your buyer understand how helpful and effective the implementation team is. Position them to succeed by building confidence in them and their role. 

Ask the right questions and deliver value to your customers

You won’t always wind up with a sale when using the consultative sales approach, and that’s okay. When you focus on understanding the buyer’s perception of value and give thoughtful advice, you can create a trust-based relationship for the long term. Sometimes, that results in a purchase down the road or sending referrals your way. Consultative selling is not about any single transaction. It is ultimately about a seller helping a buyer succeed. When you can do that, you’ll create customers for life instead of just a single deal. 

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Anita Nielsen is the President of LDK Advisory Services. She offers customized sales coaching that creates sustainable success for her clients. Anita is also a sales performance coach for the Forbes Coaches Council and advisory board member for the National Association of Women in Sales. She holds ... Read More an MBA from the New York Institute of Technology.

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Consultative Selling: Guide to Long-Term Customer Relationships

• September 4, 2024

Ever feel like you’re just another salesperson pushing products?

It’s time to change the game with consultative selling. 

Consultative selling is all about understanding your customers and meeting their real needs . 

This approach isn’t just a strategy; it’s a way to build trust and create lasting relationships. 

In this article, you’ll learn how to master consultative selling techniques and boost your sales success. 

Keep on reading to start transforming your sales and marketing today!

What is Consultative Selling?

Consultative selling is a sales approach that prioritizes understanding the customer’s needs and providing tailored solutions that address those needs. This method moves away from the traditional hard-sell tactics, focusing instead on building trust and establishing a relationship with the customer.

In consultative selling, the salesperson acts as an advisor , helping the customer make informed decisions that are best for their situation. It’s about being customer-centric, where the goal is to add value and solve problems rather than just making a sale. 

This approach positions the salesperson as a partner in the customer’s success, which can lead to stronger, long-term relationships.

The Consultative Selling Process: Steps and Methodologies

The consultative selling process is all about building strong, trust-based relationships with your customers by deeply understanding their needs and providing tailored solutions. 

By following this process, you can create meaningful connections, offer real value, and ultimately drive long-term success for both you and your customers.

1. Preparation

Before you meet with a customer, it’s crucial to do thorough audience research . Understand their industry, market trends, and any specific challenges they may be facing. Look into their company history, recent news, and their competitors. The more you know, the better you can tailor your approach . 

This step sets the foundation for a successful consultative sales process by ensuring you come to the table with relevant knowledge that shows you’re invested in their success.

2. Building Rapport

The first few moments of your interaction are vital for establishing trust. Begin by engaging in light conversation that helps you connect on a personal level . Show genuine interest in their business and listen carefully to their initial concerns. 

Building rapport isn’t just about being friendly; it’s about creating a comfortable environment where the customer feels understood and valued. This step helps break down barriers and opens the door for deeper discussions about their needs.

3. Needs Assessment

In the needs assessment phase, your goal is to uncover the customer’s true pain points and objectives . Ask open-ended, insightful questions that encourage them to talk about their challenges, goals, and any previous attempts to address these issues. Listen actively and take notes. 

This step is critical because it helps you gather the information needed to offer a solution that’s precisely tailored to their situation. The better you understand their needs, the more effective your solution will be.

4. Presenting Solutions

With a clear understanding of the customer’s needs, you’re now ready to present a solution. Tailor your presentation to address their specific challenges . Highlight how your product or service can solve their problems and add value to their business. 

Use real-world examples or case studies to demonstrate the effectiveness of your solution. Make it clear that you’re not just selling a product, but offering a partnership that can help them achieve their goals.

5. Handling Objections

Objections are a natural part of the sales process. When they arise, listen carefully to the customer’s concerns. Use empathy to acknowledge their points and provide clear, concise responses that address their worries. 

This is where your consultative selling skills shine. Instead of pushing back, engage in a dialogue that reassures them of the benefits and reliability of your solution. Handling objections effectively can turn hesitations into confidence.

6. Closing the Deal

When you’ve addressed all concerns, it’s time to guide the customer toward making a decision. In consultative selling, closing the deal isn’t about pressure; it’s about helping the customer feel confident in their choice. 

Summarize how your solution meets their needs and the value it brings . Encourage them to take the next step, whether it’s signing an agreement or scheduling a follow-up meeting. Make the transition to a decision as seamless and reassuring as possible.

7. Follow-Up

The relationship doesn’t end once the deal is closed. Sending follow-up emails is essential for reinforcing the trust you’ve built and ensuring customer satisfaction . Check in with the customer to see how they’re finding the solution and offer ongoing support. 

This step helps solidify your role as a trusted advisor and can lead to repeat business and referrals. It’s about maintaining the relationship and demonstrating that your commitment to their success continues long after the sale is made.

Consultative Selling Skills and Techniques

To excel in consultative selling, you need specific skills that focus on understanding and meeting your customer’s needs. These skills help build trust, create value, and position you as a trusted advisor. 

Here are the key skills and techniques to master for successful consultative selling.

Active Listening

Fully concentrate on what the customer is saying to truly understand their needs and concerns. This means not just hearing their words but also paying attention to their tone, body language, and underlying emotions. 

Active listening helps you gather valuable information that can guide your sales approach and shows the customer that you are genuinely interested in what they have to say.

Show genuine concern and understanding of the customer’s situation and challenges. Empathy allows you to connect with the customer on an emotional level, making them feel valued and understood. 

When you empathize, you demonstrate that you are not just focused on making a sale, but on providing a solution that will genuinely help them.

Questioning Techniques

Use open-ended questions to uncover deeper insights into the customer’s needs and motivations. Questions like “What challenges are you currently facing?” or “What are your goals for the next quarter?” encourage customers to share detailed information. 

This helps you understand their priorities and tailor your solution accordingly, ensuring it meets their specific requirements.

Problem-Solving

Offer solutions that are tailored to address the specific challenges the customer has identified. This involves understanding the problem at hand and proposing a customized solution that fits their unique situation. 

Effective problem-solving builds trust and demonstrates your expertise, making it more likely that the customer will choose your solution.

Adaptability

Be flexible in your approach to adjust to different customer needs and situations. Every customer is unique, and what works for one may not work for another. 

Being adaptable means being ready to pivot your strategy based on the customer’s responses and the information you gather during your conversation. This flexibility helps you stay relevant and responsive, increasing your chances of success.

Building Rapport

Establish trust and credibility through genuine interactions and a customer-centric attitude. Building rapport is about creating a connection that goes beyond just the business transaction. 

It involves showing interest in the customer as a person, understanding their business, and aligning yourself with their success. Strong rapport makes customers more comfortable sharing their true needs and more likely to trust your recommendations.

Benefits of Consultative Selling

Consultative selling offers significant advantages that can transform your sales approach. By focusing on understanding and addressing your customer’s needs, you can create more meaningful interactions and long-term relationships. 

Here are some key benefits of adopting a consultative sales approach:

• Stronger Customer Relationships : Building trust and rapport fosters connections that last beyond a single sale.
• Increased Customer Satisfaction : By offering personalized solutions, you enhance the customer experience and meet their specific needs.
• Higher Sales Success : Addressing customer challenges with tailored solutions improves your chances of closing deals.
• Greater Customer Loyalty : Demonstrating genuine concern for customer success encourages long-term loyalty and repeat business.
• Differentiation from Competitors : Acting as a trusted advisor sets you apart from others who focus solely on the sale.
• Improved Customer Insights : Engaging deeply with customers provides valuable insights into their needs and preferences, helping you refine your offerings.
• Enhanced Reputation : Consistently providing value and acting in the customer's best interest can boost your reputation in the market as a reliable, customer-focused professional.

By leveraging these benefits, consultative selling allows you to build lasting, profitable relationships with your customers and stand out in a competitive market.

Examples of Consultative Selling in Action

Consultative selling can take many forms, depending on the industry and customer needs. Here are a few examples of consultative selling in action:

Example 1: Technology Sales

In technology sales, you might start by assessing a client’s current IT infrastructure . You ask detailed questions to understand their pain points, like outdated software or security concerns.

Then, you propose a customized solution that addresses these specific issues, such as a cloud-based service that improves efficiency and security. This approach not only meets their needs but also positions you as a knowledgeable advisor.

Example 2: Real Estate Sales

In real estate, consultative selling involves understanding a buyer’s lifestyle and future goals . Instead of just showing properties, you ask about their daily routines, preferred amenities, and long-term plans.

Based on this information, you recommend homes that align with their personal and financial needs , building trust and ensuring a better match. This creates a stronger relationship and a more satisfying buying experience.

Example 3: Financial Services Sales

For financial services, consultative selling means taking the time to learn about a client’s financial goals and risk tolerance . You discuss their past investment experiences and future plans, offering tailored advice that fits their specific situation. 

Whether recommending a retirement plan or investment strategy , this personalized approach shows your commitment to their financial success and helps build a long-term advisory relationship.

Frequently Asked Questions About Consultative Selling

If you’re exploring consultative selling, you probably have a few questions. Here are some frequently asked questions to help you understand this sales approach better:

What is a key difference between consultative selling and traditional selling?

A key difference is the focus on the customer’s needs rather than just pushing a product. In traditional selling, the aim is to close a deal quickly, often with a one-size-fits-all solution. 

Consultative selling, on the other hand, involves taking the time to understand the customer’s unique challenges and offering tailored solutions . This method builds stronger relationships and creates more meaningful interactions.

How does consultative selling improve customer retention?

Consultative selling improves customer retention by creating trust and demonstrating genuine care for the customer’s success. When you take the time to understand their needs and provide personalized solutions, customers feel valued and understood. 

This approach leads to higher satisfaction and loyalty because customers see you as a partner in their success, not just someone trying to make a sale.

What are some common mistakes to avoid in consultative selling?

One common mistake is not listening actively to the customer. If you focus too much on what you want to sell instead of what the customer needs, you lose the essence of consultative selling. Another mistake is failing to ask the right questions that dig deeper into the customer’s pain points. 

Also, pushing for a quick close without fully understanding the customer’s needs can damage trust. To succeed in consultative selling, prioritize listening, understanding, and providing genuine value.

Key Takeaways on Consultative Selling

Consultative selling is a powerful approach that puts the customer’s needs at the center of the sales process. By focusing on building trust and understanding , you can position yourself as a trusted advisor rather than just a salesperson. 

This method involves several key steps, from preparation and building rapport to asking the right questions and providing tailored solutions. The benefits of consultative selling are numerous, including stronger customer relationships, higher satisfaction, and greater loyalty. 

Whether you’re in technology, real estate, or financial services, consultative selling techniques can help you create more meaningful connections and drive long-term success .

The key takeaway is that consultative selling is not about quick wins but about creating lasting value for your customers. By mastering the skills and techniques involved, you can differentiate yourself in a competitive market, build stronger relationships, and ultimately achieve better sales results.

Edgar Abong

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• What is Consultative Selling? (7 Steps to Win Big Accounts)

Consultative selling is the number #1 strategy in sales.

89% of buyers describe the salespeople they ultimately do business with as “ trusted advisors .”

From the sales strategy perspective,

Nearly 53% of sales reps believe following a consultative approach can make their sales process more efficient.

What do we learn from this?

That hard-selling will not work in today’s time.

People want to be advised on what’s best for them, and that’s why consultative sales.

But what makes this strategy unique? How can you apply this approach in your selling process? Let’s look at them.

What is consultative selling?

Consultative selling is a value-driven sales technique that puts improved customer outcomes first. It involves actively listening to customers, identifying their challenges, and proposing a solution. The goal here is to address the needs of buyers and propose measurable gains by using your product/service.

According to Mack Hanan , “consultative selling is selling at high margins so that the profits you improve can be shared with you.”

Why is consultative selling important?

Today, customers control the way they want to be sold.

However, they may be looking at the problem differently and may not know all the possible solutions. In consultative selling, you listen to them and offer a solution explaining how your product/service can help them achieve their business bottom line.

75% of buyers and 82% of sellers agree upon aligning with the buyer’s success metrics related to the purchase.

“By using a consultative sales approach, we help clients achieve their business goals. At times, clients do not have a strategy. But since we’ve been in the industry for a long time, we know the ins and outs, and using this experience, we help them build a strategy and not just sell a product,” says Arbaz Jawed, Manager – Inside Sales, LeadSquared .

Consultative selling helps both parties. Buyers find a solution to improve profits (or reduce operational costs), and the salesperson makes a sale. More importantly, because it’s a win-win partnership, the relationship between buyers and sellers lasts longer.

Now you may ask, how is consultative selling different from other sales methodologies. After all, other sales tactics also involve active communication between sales reps and buyers.

Well, here’s your answer.

Consultative selling vs. traditional sales techniques

Consultative selling puts customers first. It is all about decoding customers’ problems and proposing solutions that can be translated into financial gains.

But does consultative selling depend on the seller’s intuition?

It is a definitive process. You can train your teams to follow the consultative approach.

Steps involved in consultative sales process

The most difficult challenge in consultative approach is to stop selling products and start selling the added financial values a salesperson could contribute to a customer’s business.

For instance, 65% of sellers say they “always” put buyers first. But only 23% of buyers agree.

Adopting a consultative approach requires changing the typical sales mindset and stepping into the customer’s shoes to understand their plight. For instance, instead of their profits, sellers have to work around the customer’s profit equations.

Also, consultative selling is an iterative process. That is, you work continuously to solve new challenges for your client.

1. Identify customer problems in financial terms

Most customers don’t buy a product for its features. They want to see the real value in it.

The first step in the consultative sales process is to conduct discovery calls and identify customer problems in financial terms. Make sure you ask SMART (Specific, Measurable, Action-oriented, Related, and Time-bound) open ended questions .

For example, you can ask:

• How much time does it take to accomplish X?
• How is the issue affecting your operations? Does it have any financial impact?
• By when do you want this issue to be resolved?

 Be aware of industry norms, average sales cycle , average turnaround time, etc. Then only you’ll be able to compare your client’s current standings and scope of improvement.

You can take inspiration from the following consultative selling script.

It takes you 2 hours to follow-up with a client and record the disposition. Our average is 1 hour. What value do you see in terms of productivity, resource optimization, faster revenue if we can bring you closer to our norm?

2. Propose a quantifiable solution

In the 1960s, when Tom Watson Jr. was restructuring IBM, he used to say – “We make computers, but we sell customer growth by applying them.” 

At times he even proved that a dollar invested with IBM could yield a greater rate of return than the same dollar invested in their operations. He would quantify the gains he proposed to the customers.

Similarly, you should propose solutions that customers could measure. Instead of saying “you’ll see immense benefits,” use strong, convincing, and verifiable statements. Then only they’ll be able to find value in your proposition.

Here are the sample scripts.

• You will be saving nearly one percent or $13000.00 per year on supply-chain operations
• You will be driving up to $10 Million additional revenue per year.

3. Take ownership of the project

When you promise a result, you must take complete ownership of the project. It involves everything – from planning to allocating resources.

Because, at the end of the day, the client should look up to you for results.

“In one of our deals, I hand-held the client for an initial couple of months. I would explain the best practices, what they can do better, and more. They used to consult me on their business strategy. They would say – hey Arbaz this is what we are planning to do. Can we achieve this through LeadSquared? So, in a way, by being a trusted advisor to the client, we became integral to their growth plan,” says Arbaz Jawed, Manager – Inside Sales, LeadSquared .

4. Share proposal

All this while, you were trying to get the client’s requirements and your services on the same page. Now it’s time to share a formal proposal.

You can follow the McKinsey Situation-Complication-Resolution (SCR) Framework to present your proposition to the clients. This strategy involves showing the client’s current standing, complications that may arise by not addressing the challenges, and the solution and how your offering could help.

Make sure you include all the points you highlighted during your conversations with the client. Indicate how your solution can help the client gain more profits , faster results , and with greater certainty .

Here are the sample statements.

• (More profits) “For one of our customers, each $100 invested with us resulted in $1200 in revenue. “
• (Faster results) “New profits should be achievable within 90 days.” Note that longer time frames incur unpredictable risks (for example, the pandemic disrupted several businesses). If you could solve the problem sooner, make sure you highlight that.
• (Greater certainty) If you have a strong customer base, you can state that this strategy has worked X% of times. But if you’re new to the business, you can illustrate case studies to present your case.

5. Follow-up for feedback, address concerns

One of the most overlooked steps in consultative selling is to follow up.

In fact, 1 in 3 sales reps find follow-ups the toughest job in sales!

But just because it’s difficult, you shouldn’t skip it.

There’s tremendous value in the follow up.

In sales, a potential deal may go cold for numerous reasons. Reasons like change in management, people, project priority, etc., may create further hurdles in your deal. That’s why it is crucial to stay in touch with the stakeholders throughout the sales cycle .

You can follow up for feedback, revert with a solution for any concerns, etc. Make sure you address their questions asap and do not delay the proceedings from your end.

6. Manage partner expectations and enter an agreement

Discuss the timeline for the accomplishment of each installation and operational stage. Schedule cadence for periodic progress review. Be clear on the deliverables and money matters.

For example, you can illustrate the following financial benefits to the customer.

• The expected ROI (return on investment)
• Payback period: when they get their investment back.
• Net profit: what they make on their investment or their increment over and above payback.
• Cost: The part of the investment on which there is no return (e.g., one-time installation cost)

Once both the parties are on the same page, you can enter the partnership agreement.

7. Measure outcomes

The success of consultative sellers depends on the success of their customers.

That is, you’re doing great if your customers are doing great.

So, even after closing sales , stay in touch with customers and follow up with them for the following metrics.

• Has the cash flow/number of customers increased, or the sales cycle reduced after implementing your solution?
• Is there a gain in efficiency, productivity, or outcomes as a result of your offering? How has that gain impacted profits/revenues?
• Use checkpoints to measure the impacts of implementing your system into customer business functions.

So, these are the important steps in the consultative sales process. Remember, consultative selling is an iterative process. Repeat the above steps to find more use cases (new applications, upgrading, replacing existing tools, etc.) for your product/service with your client. This is how you’ll grow together.

Now let’s talk about the skills that make consultative selling successful.

The consultative selling skill-set

1. active listening..

Top-performing sales reps listen more than they speak on sales calls.

Also, if you look at the seller behavior that makes a difference, you’ll notice 47% of buyers state that they’re more likely to buy if the sales rep is informed about their company and business needs (surpassing pricing by 3%).

Active listening is crucial in consultative selling because that’s how you’ll uncover the client’s challenges.

“ Clients should feel that you’re really resonating and listening to what they need and expect ,” says Polly C. Heiss, Executive Director – Integrated Logistics, Kerry Logistics

2. Communication skills

89% of people believe that effective communication is crucial.

But unfortunately, 8 out of 10 people rate their business communication as average or poor.

Consultative selling requires reps to communicate effectively with stakeholders. Every discussion is the moment of truth. They cannot afford to be misunderstood.

Especially in today’s hybrid work environment, where still a part of the communication will be online, sellers must learn to communicate effectively and explain their proposition to the buyers.

“ Communication practices are essential in this new environment where you rarely engage directly or in-person with your team,” says Kevin Ackhurst, Head of Sales – APAC, HubSpot

3. Presentation skills

Consultative selling requires sales reps to present their proposals effectively. Therefore, reps must know how to build effective presentations.

Having a sales enablement strategy can also help as it involves preparing sales collateral in advance to reduce the time spent drafting proposals in real-time.

4. Industry and product knowledge

39% of buyers go with the sellers who have industry knowledge. And 42% of buyers will immediately drop the deal if the sales rep doesn’t understand their own product or service.

Now you know why you should be aware of your product/service as well as industry trends.

These skills become even more important in consultative sales because you’ll be leading the change in your client’s organization. You’ll be the SME (Subject Matter Expert) for your client. Thus, having a thorough industry and product knowledge is a must.

5. Rapport-building

Rapport is a sense of understanding and trust. It is one of the important skills in sales because buyers need to trust the seller to build a healthy and long-term relationship with them.

38% of buyers state that trust in the relationship with the salesperson influences their purchase decision.

The simplest way to build a rapport is to remember the context and conversations with the buyer. And it has become simpler with technology.

97% of sellers say sales tools (such as CRM software) help them build stronger relationships with buyers.

For example, LeadSquared sales execution CRM allows users to track the activities of the prospects across several channels, such as website visits, email opens, ad clicks, call details, etc.

This way, the sellers get an idea of the buyer’s interest at any point in time. They can also revisit the telephony communication or email/WhatsApp/chat/SMS messages to recall the context anytime.

6. Ability to match customer requirements with your offerings

Note, the buyer’s requirement may not be the direct use case of your product/service.

For example, the buyer’s challenge may involve increasing revenue from a specific territory.

Now let’s say you have a Mobile CRM app .

As you can see, CRM apps are meant for sales reps to organize their tasks and manage communications and relationships with prospective and existing customers. So, under normal circumstances, you may think that the company should spend more on marketing or hire more sales reps to achieve their business goals.

But if you’re a consultative seller, you’ll try to find the gaps in their existing process. For instance, field sales reps waste half of their time in detours. So, by helping them with route guidance through their CRM app, they can avoid detours and do twice the number of meetings as they were doing before – leading to 2X sales possibilities.

Thus, in a consultative sales approach, you also get to look beyond the typical use cases of your product. :)

Next, we’ll look at some of the consultative selling examples to inspire you further.

Consultative selling examples

Earlier, people used to think that this strategy applies to high-value deals (e.g., B2B sales). But, in fact, all businesses, whether B2C or B2B, can follow this approach and be more customer-centric.

All it requires is presenting the customer’s challenges and proposing a quantifiable solution.

EdTechs like Coursera offer certifications with a clear proposition. There are X job openings, and by investing $Y in your learning, you become eligible for at least a $Z job.

Here are some more examples of how you can apply the consultative sales approach.

In insurance sales, agents try to understand the health and financial conditions of people and accordingly propose policies. They suggest – by paying X amount in premium, you can avail Y benefits, which otherwise, they’ll have to pay from their pockets.

Now consider car sales. By explaining all the aspects of the car – mileage, maintenance cost, warranty, etc., sales reps can make buyers feel more confident in their purchase.

You can apply the consultative selling method in almost all sales scenarios. All you need to do is map the customer requirements with your offering and propose quantifiable gains. If you think sales technology like CRM software can help you gain better insights into your customers, you’re absolutely right.

We recommend LeadSquared CRM .

It can help you with the following.

• Fetch lead details automatically from your ad campaigns, landing pages, etc. It also auto-populates the fields (from LinkedIn, Clearbit, and other data enrichment tools) so that you don’t have to do it manually.
• Maintain a timeline of lead activities and interactions.
• Record and access conversations for training, quality control, and improvements.
• Schedule meetings, get reminders, and make notes on the CRM platform itself.

To experience all these features and more,

References:

• LinkedIn State of Sales Survey 2021 (APAC, United States and Canada)
• Consultative Selling™ by Mack Hanan

Meenu Joshi works with the Content Marketing team of LeadSquared. She consults with multiple clients on leveraging content to generate and nurture leads. You can connect with her on Twitter

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The 6 Principles of a Consultative Sales Process

Updated: July 18, 2019

Published: February 13, 2013

What is Consultative Sales?

The consultative sales process is primarily focused on the experience that the potential customer (the lead) feels and sees during their interactions with you. It’s about the how you find ways to provide your leads with value and make it all about them. Not your product, your business, or your numbers.

How do you sell? You probably have a sales methodology of some kind, whether you know it or not. If you sell, you have a preferred way of selling. It doesn’t matter if you’re a solo entrepreneur, a small business with just one salesperson, a well oiled team of ten or more, or a sales team that spans the globe. Every business has their own way of selling.

How do you sell?

With inbound sales, the goal of sales is to sell what you create. Sales is not an end in itself. This is often known as the consultative sales process , and it can make all the difference in the world to you, your business, and your customers.

What is consultative selling?

The consultative sales process is primarily  focused on the experience that the potential customer (the lead) feels and sees during their interactions with you. It’s about the how you find ways to provide your leads with value and make it all about them. Not your product, your business, your numbers. The consultative sales process is most especially not about you. 

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Sometimes this is also referred to as solution-based selling.

Solution selling is a sales methodology. Rather than just promoting an existing product, the salesperson focuses on the customer's pain(s) and addresses the issue with his or her offerings (product and services).  - Wikipedia

In a previous article we discussed how to begin the consultative sales process. Generally speaking, the initial conversation with your lead might begin with your sales rep saying something like this:

Hi Mark, I was notified that you came to our website and recently downloaded (reference the conversion event). Do you remember doing that? Great! What were you looking for help with?

Notice that the emphasis is on what the potential customer wants and needs , not what you want and need from the potential customer.

There are six principles to the consultative sales process:  

These six principles should provide the basic outline of the consultative sales methodology that you create for your business. The methodology you create should take into account the thing you’re selling, the typical sales cycle for your business, your industry, and your buyer personas. 

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1. Research

The research phase of consultative sales involves using the lead intelligence that your business gathered in the process of acquiring each lead. If you’re doing inbound marketing well, then you’ve gathered data on your leads like company size, pages visited on your site, email preferences, and social media behaviors. Even more importantly, you’ve gathered tons of information on exactly what sort of content your lead is most interested in, which tells you what questions they have topmost in their minds.

In HubSpot, all of this lead intelligence can be found in your Contacts tool. The properties you’ve selected as most important to qualifying a lead will be your “starred” properties, and your Contact Timeline will give you a quick and detailed overview of what your lead’s experience has been with your business to date. All of your sales reps would have access to this lead intelligence data via the Sales Rep User role in HubSpot.

Salespeople should also spend some time researching leads’ recent company news, social media profiles , personal blogs (if applicable), and of course Google their name to see what else comes up.

You should always research the lead thoroughly before you make any next move.

When you speak with the lead, be sure to ask open-ended questions. Now that you have all this detailed information on them as a result of your research, you may be tempted to assume you know everything there is to know about them. This is a mistake. The point is to allow the lead to volunteer the information themselves, as result of (and contributing to) the trust you are building between sales rep and lead.

Ask questions that start with the words Who, What, Where, How, Why, and When. Avoid starting questions with words like Do, Are, You, and Can. These types of questions tend to lead to yes or no answers, which is exactly the sort of response you most want to avoid.

The goal of asking questions is to slowly discover what the lead’s goals are, the plan they might have to reach those goals, the challenges that are in the way of executing this plan, and the timeline that’s in place for reaching them.

You also need to uncover their budget and the level of authority of the person you’re talking to.  Are they an end user, an influencer, or decision maker, or the person who controls the budget? You can find this out if you ask the right questions.

Always be asking questions during the consultative sales process. Questions are one of your greatest sales tools.

Always. Be. Listening. It’s the most important thing a great salesperson can do. And we’re talking here about active listening , not passive listening. You’re focused on the person talking and are ready to respond and repeat what they said. The goal is to make sure that both people understand what the other is saying.

As you practice active listening, you’ll need to be documenting everything that the lead tells you. All of the information you obtain will help you qualify and/or close the lead.  You must be very attentive to their tone, pitch, and level of enthusiasm. Those elements will help you decide what your next move should be.

Practice makes perfect. Always. Be. Listening.

As you are actively listening, you need to be responding, and as you respond you should looking for opportunities to teach. But note that this is not about teaching your lead about your product or service. It’s about helping the lead learn to overcome their challenges and build a plan to reach their goals.

This may or may not involve using your product or service. Your focus should be to help the lead, no matter what .

You must be careful not to give away too much knowledge. You must balance the knowledge you give with the questions you ask and the answers you get back.

Always be teaching.

You’re always going to be qualifying the lead. A qualified lead has goals, might or might not have a plan, definitely has challenges to overcome, a defined timeline, and budget. But keep in mind that an unqualified lead is just as good as a qualified lead during the consultative sales process. Unqualified leads give you a chance to help, be friendly, and move on. Qualified leads, of course, give you the chance to help, be friendly, and sell. The sooner you can identify a lead that is not a right fit for your product or service, the better.

Don’t continue to try to close unqualified leads; it will just hurt them and you in the long run.

You want to be spending the most amount of time and provide the most attention to the qualified leads.

It should be fairly easy to close your qualified leads. They have budget and have the authority to authorize the purchase.

If pushback does occur during the closing sequence or at any point you can always try to dig in to what the consequences might be for the lead if they fail to buy from you. For example:

“What happens if you aren’t able to reach your goal?”

“What happens if you can’t execute your plan or overcome your challenges?”

The closing sequence should feel natural to both you and the lead. If you’re always striving to close only those leads that are the right fit for your business, then your retention rate on those new customers will also be quite high.

Use these six principles to create your own consultative sales methodology. Salespeople perform at their highest output when there is a process that they can understand and repeat, and when they know they have a process that will help them close business. And your leads will never feel like they were being sold to; even those leads that were never qualified to buy from you in the first place.

The experience will be remarkable . Not ordinary, or disappointing.

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Home Blog Business Consulting Presentation Slides: A Guide to PPT Consultant Tools

Consulting Presentation Slides: A Guide to PPT Consultant Tools

Consulting presentations are the foundation of professional communication in disciplines like strategic planning, management, and corporate decision-making. Notably, firms like McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and other leading management consulting firms have mastered the art of creating effective slide decks to a level where these presentations are not just tools but strategic assets.

Fundamentally, consultant presentation slides allow business professionals to share insights, recommendations, and any kind of complex data in a coherent, visual, engaging format that facilitates understanding [3]. In this article, we will explore what defines a consulting presentation, what a consulting slide deck is, and the types of templates we can implement in our daily work lives for this purpose.

Table of Contents

What is a Consulting Presentation?

What is a consulting presentation template, types of consulting presentation slides, final words.

A consulting presentation is a carefully structured visual tool consultants use to communicate analyses, findings, and recommendations to clients. It synthesizes complex information into digestible, visually engaging slides that facilitate understanding and decision-making [1]. Typically, these presentations are grounded in rigorous research and analysis and aim to address specific client challenges or opportunities. 

Consulting presentations serve multiple purposes: to inform, persuade, and provide a clear path forward based on data-driven insights and strategic thinking. The effectiveness of a consulting presentation lies in its ability to make the complex simple, turn data into narratives, and inspire action among its audience, which often includes key stakeholders and decision-makers within an organization.

We can define a consulting presentation template as a slide or slide deck tailored to create assets inside consulting presentations. These templates can depict graphs, diagrams, roadmaps, dashboards, strategies, etc. Presenters can mix and match templates from different styles, modify their PowerPoint theme, customize the content, and get it ready to create a unique slide deck for a consultancy report.

In this section, we will group the different consultancy presentation templates by category. Remember that McKinsey presentations, BCG slides, and other popular consulting deck options are made from these tools.

Strategy Consulting Templates

Strategy consulting templates are visual tools designed to assist in developing and presenting business strategies. They facilitate a systematic approach to analyzing market conditions, competitive landscapes, and internal capabilities to make strategic decisions. McKinsey slide decks are fine examples of this category.

Market Analysis and Competitive Landscape

Whenever we use market analysis or competitive landscape templates, we aim to present research on market trends, customer behavior, and competitive landscapes. To name a few potential options, we can work with a Go-To-Market template outlining the target market, value proposition, marketing and sales strategies, distribution channels, and competitive analysis of a product or service release.

A second option would be to work with a Sales Battlecard , a concise, strategic document used by sales teams to understand and communicate the key features, benefits, and differentiators of their product or service compared to competitors. It’s designed to equip sales representatives with quick references and talking points highlighting competitive advantages and addressing potential objections during sales conversations. For this reason, it can be instrumental in consulting presentations to develop new sales strategies for your operators.

A third option is to implement a Competitive Landscape slide in the format of a competitor matrix to identify the leading competitors and understand their products, strategies, strengths, weaknesses, market share, and positioning. By analyzing competitors’ performance and strategies, a business can better position itself, differentiate its offerings, anticipate competitor moves, and identify areas for growth and improvement.

Business Model Canvas

The business model canvas evaluates a company’s value proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances. Therefore, it helps businesses align their activities by illustrating potential trade-offs. The canvas includes nine key components: Key Partners, Key Activities, Key Resources, Value Propositions, Customer Relationships, Channels, Customer Segments, Cost Structure, and Revenue Streams.

If you seek a creative option, try this layout alternative to the typical business model canvas PPT template.

SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)

The SWOT analysis framework is a popular tool across presenters as it can be repurposed for any industry. They allow us to provide a comprehensive overview of the current strategic situation for consultancy presentations. Organizations can then leverage strengths and opportunities while addressing weaknesses and mitigating threats.

Some options of SWOT Analysis PPT templates include:

Porter’s Five Forces Analysis

Porter’s Five Forces is a framework developed by Michael E. Porter that analyzes the industry structure and corporate strategy. It identifies the intensity of competition and attractiveness of a market through five forces: Competitive Rivalry, Threat of New Entrants, Threat of Substitute Products or Services, Bargaining Power of Suppliers, and Bargaining Power of Buyers. In consulting presentations, this framework is instrumental for several reasons:

• Industry Analysis and Strategic Planning: This tool allows us to get a comprehensive overview of the external environment, which helps customers understand an industry’s dynamics. It will also enable consultants to identify where power lies in business situations, guiding the decision-making toward profitability and competitiveness. You can find some McKinsey slides examples covering this approach [2].
• Assessment of Profitability Potential: A market with weak forces suggests higher profitability potential, while solid forces may signal a competitive and challenging market.
• Investment Decisions: For clients considering entering new markets or industries, Porter’s Five Forces can guide investment decisions by highlighting the barriers to entry, the potential for rivalry, and other critical factors influencing the sector’s attractiveness.

Blue Ocean Strategy

The Blue Ocean Strategy , developed by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, is a business strategy that encourages companies to create new demand in an uncontested market space, or a “Blue Ocean,” rather than competing head-to-head with other companies in an existing industry, or “Red Ocean.” This approach focuses on innovation, differentiation, and creating value for both the company and its customers, leading to new opportunities for growth.

Consultants can apply this framework to encourage clients to explore new, uncontested markets. Another approach is to emphasize the importance of the unique value proposition. 

Presenters can also combine this tool with strategic planning to boost organizational innovation.

Strategy Roadmap

To implement the strategies defined in a plan, consulting firm presentations must use graphic methods to clearly depict the different stages. This is where Strategic Roadmaps become valuable resources for consulting presentations. We can use the road metaphor for the roadmap, work with timelines, or use any other visual tool to depict a segmented plan.

Operations Consulting Templates

Operations consulting templates are visual tools designed to showcase the analysis and improvement of business processes and operations. Business professionals can use these graphic elements in presentations to identify bottlenecks, waste, and opportunities for improvement. In short, operations consulting templates enable consultants to deliver actionable recommendations that enhance operational performance.

Supply Chain Management

Supply Chain Management (SCM) is a critical element in Operations as it involves overseeing/managing the flow of goods and services, from raw materials to delivered products to the customer. Working with SCM templates helps consultants present tailored reports about supply chain processes and their inefficiencies: bottlenecks, sub-optimized stages, etc. Consequently, organizations can work on cost-reduction strategies, leverage IoT technologies, and aim for sustainable practices.

Lean Management and Six Sigma

Presenters can use a multitude of slides to discuss lean management or Six Sigma processes, but above all, two elements stand out: the DMAIC and the SIPOC diagram .

The DMAIC diagram can be used for multiple cases in consulting presentations. One option would be presenting a case study where defining the project scope led to targeted improvements, illustrating how a similar focus could benefit the client. For companies already implementing Six Sigma strategies, consultants can share benchmark data and metrics from past projects during the Measure phase, showing how precise measurement informed the strategy. Or discuss an Analyze phase from a previous engagement where deep data analysis revealed unexpected insights, suggesting a thorough examination could uncover similar opportunities for the client.

In turn, the SIPOC diagram can visually summarize a process by mapping out its key components, aiding in understanding and communication with the client. Consultants can highlight specific segments of the SIPOC diagram to pinpoint where inefficiencies or issues occur, directing focus to areas with the most significant potential for improvement. Another use in consulting presentations is before implementing changes, as the SIPOC diagram can capture the current state of a process as a baseline, making it easier to measure the impact of improvements post-implementation.

Performance Dashboard

As the final element in this category, consultants are often hired to analyze a company’s performance. This is where Performance Dashboard PPT templates shine, offering a visual method to share condensed data extracted from analysis. The performance dashboard can reflect sales operations, logistics, marketing engagement rate, and plenty of other options. It’s a versatile tool that can be customized to track different metrics.

Financial Consulting Templates

Financial consulting templates help consultants guide the analysis and presentation of financial data, strategies, and recommendations. They enable systematically reviewing and communicating aspects of financial health, including performance analysis, budgeting, forecasting, and investment strategies. Elements like financial ratios, cash flow analysis, and cost-benefit assessments are typical examples, allowing for a comprehensive evaluation of financial stability and growth opportunities.

Financial Performance Analysis

Several tools can be used to conduct a financial performance analysis in a consulting presentation. The typical options are the Profit & Loss (P&L), financial dashboards, and performance review templates.

Cost Reduction Strategies

These templates showcase proposed strategies to minimize operational costs and increase overall profit. We can select the preferred presentation template depending on the company’s size, operational complexity, and other variables. Here, we leave you two potential options.

Investment Appraisal

The Investment Appraisal slide deck contains tools to evaluate the viability and profitability of proposed investments or projects. Although you can find some valuable tools for this in the format of Porter’s Five Forces, DMAIC and SIPOC, and SWOT analysis, it’s best to work with tailored slide decks for investment and financial projects.

Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) Strategy

Business deals and negotiations regarding mergers or company acquisitions should be handled carefully. Consultants addressing clients about these two situations must communicate clearly, simplify the steps to follow, define the best practices to complete the process smoothly and define how to communicate with the personnel. You can check our Business Partnership PowerPoint template for a well-rounded framework for consultants to discuss these topics.

Financial Modeling Overview

We can work with plenty of templates for this last element to discuss financial modeling. For instance, the P&L model is a good fit in this category, but we can broaden our horizons – depending on the type of analysis – by using tools like the ones below.

The Efficient Frontier Curve is a concept from portfolio theory. It illustrates the set of optimal portfolios that offer the highest expected return for a given level of risk or the lowest risk for a given level of expected return. As part of a financial model overview, it can help investors understand the risk-return trade-off of different investment portfolios, aiding in selecting an investment strategy that aligns with their risk tolerance and return objectives.

The Optimal Capital Structure Curve demonstrates the relationship between a company’s debt-to-equity ratio and its overall cost of capital. Including this in a financial model overview can provide insights into how different financing strategies might affect a company’s value. It highlights the theoretically optimal mix of debt and equity financing that minimizes the company’s cost of capital and maximizes its value.

The Trade Off Theory of Capital Structure Curve suggests that there’s an optimal capital structure where the tax benefits of debt financing are balanced against the costs of financial distress. Including this curve in an overview can illustrate companies’ balancing act in deciding how much debt to take on, considering the benefits of tax shields against the potential costs of bankruptcy or financial distress.

Finally, the CAPM Capital Asset Pricing Model Curve determines the expected return on an asset or portfolio based on its beta (volatility or risk relative to the market). This model can be part of a financial model overview to demonstrate the relationship between the expected return of a security or portfolio and its risk, helping investors understand how to price risk when making investment decisions.

Human Resources Consulting Templates

Human Resource (HR) consulting templates are PPT templates designed to assist in evaluating and improving HR functions such as recruitment processes, talent management, and employee performance evaluation, to name a few. HR consulting templates enable consultants to offer actionable insights and recommendations that support the development of a motivated, efficient, and cohesive workforce aligned with the organization’s goals.

Organizational Design and Development

Whenever we think about organizational development, Org Charts come to mind. We can work with the classical, tier-oriented chart that is easy to understand from a quick view or opt for more complex models like matrices, multi-layered level org charts, etc.

Talent Management Strategy

Talent Management PPT templates are oriented to increase the efficiency levels of talent supply inside organizations. HR teams can implement these templates to identify vacant areas, establish suitable candidate criteria, or develop training programs for the current workforce.

Employee Engagement and Satisfaction

HR consultants often collaborate with multidisciplinary teams to boost employee engagement and foster a company culture across all levels. Employee satisfaction remains a core factor, which can be linked to financial or environmental factors and career development opportunities. To address those needs in presentation design, consultants can use models like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Employee Engagement or the X Model of Employee Engagement.

Compensation and Benefits Analysis

Another stage in HR consultancy services is tailoring attractive recruiting strategies for companies in highly competitive markets, such as the IT industry. Since employees often ask for the benefits of their job offer, consultants can use tools like Employee Benefits Diagrams to express the importance of their value proposition regarding the company culture.

Training and Development Roadmap

Continuous education plans are among the tasks requested by HR consultancy services. Professionals can impact clients by delivering custom-made slide decks as if the stakeholders were part of the event, a practice commonly seen in McKinsey slides [2]. These slide decks will state the learning objectives to achieve, development roadmap, roles and responsibilities, knowledge assessments, etc.

Digital Transformation Consulting Templates

Digital Transformation Consulting Templates are slides or slide decks designed to guide organizations through integrating digital technology into all business areas. These templates help map out strategies to change how businesses operate and fundamentally deliver value to customers. They cover digital strategy formulation, technology adoption, process digitization, and digital skill development.

IT Infrastructure Review

This category features a long list of templates, as we can talk about reviewing the current network infrastructure, a migration process from physical storage to the cloud, or ITIL processes.

Digital Marketing Strategy

In our experience, consultants offering digital marketing services are required to use slide decks to wow prospective clients into hiring their agency. This can be either for SEO consultancy, e-commerce, social media marketing, and plenty of other options.

Another take in this category is when internal consultancy is done regarding the current digital marketing strategy, and the experts have to share their findings across all levels of the organization to adjust the efforts in the right direction.

Risk Management Consulting Templates

Risk Management Consulting Templates help consultants identify, assess, and present mitigation strategies for potential risks within an organization. The core aspect these templates focus on is analyzing the impact those threats can pose on a business’s operation, financial health, or reputation.

Risk Assessment Framework & Compliance

Multiple methods and tools are used for risk assessment . For instance, we can use a typical Deloitte Governance Framework Model, work with a ROAM chart, use an RMF Framework, or the COSO Cube, to name a few.

Alternatively, we can use a risk assessment matrix. Keep in mind that some of the tools mentioned in this category work both for compliance and risk assessment.

Cybersecurity

Consultancy presentations regarding cybersecurity can have two potential main uses: the first one, is where the findings of research about cybersecurity are presented to the management or key team members. This is with the objective of fixing potential threats to the organization. The second take is from a consultancy agency on cybersecurity that aims to promote its services, thus requiring high-quality visuals to communicate its value proposition to potential clients [3].

Change Management Consulting Templates

Change Management Consulting Templates are designed to support organizations through transition processes. Whether implementing new technologies, organizational restructuring, new manufacturing processes, or other changes, these templates ensure that employees are guided, supported, and motivated throughout the transformation process.

Change Management

Management consulting slide decks are used to guide clients through the process of planning, implementing, and sustaining changes within their organizations. Several models can be a good fit for this purpose, like the ADKAR framework , change management diagrams, change management models, and even change management slide decks.

Stakeholder Analysis

Stakeholder Analysis templates are ideal whenever we need to systematically identify, categorize, and assess the interests and influence of individuals or groups critical to the success of a project or initiative. This can involve working with a stakeholder matrix to evaluate their influence level and prioritize strategies, or simply identifying the stakeholders in a diagram at the initial stages of a project.

Communication Plan

A communication plan is a high-level document that includes all the information pertinent to the organization’s business objectives, goals, competitors, and communication channels. These kinds of presentations are created when the communication plan is presented to key stakeholders and management, so all details can be reviewed before sharing the document across all levels of the organization. We can work with generalist communication plans or niche-specific ones, like marketing communication plans.

Customer and Marketing Consulting Templates

Customer and Marketing Consulting Templates were created to enhance engagement with target markets and customers. By implementing these templates, consultants can represent insights for market segmentation, product positioning, or mapping the customer journey. This, in turn, helps businesses align marketing efforts with real consumer needs and preferences in their niche.

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer Journey Mapping templates are used in consulting presentations to provide a visual overview of a customer’s experience with a brand, product, or service from initial contact through various stages of engagement and long-term relationships. They serve to identify key interactions, touchpoints, and the emotional journey customers undergo. 

The usage of these consulting slides helps pinpoint areas for improvement, uncover customer pain points, and highlight moments of delight. By mapping out the customer journey, consultants can offer targeted recommendations for enhancing the customer experience, improving customer satisfaction, and ultimately driving business growth.

Market Segmentation

Market Segmentation Templates are utilized in consulting presentations to visually categorize a market into distinct groups based on various criteria like demographics, psychographics, behavior, and needs. These templates help illustrate the composition of a market, showcasing how each segment differs in terms of preferences, purchasing behavior, and responsiveness to marketing strategies. 

By employing market segmentation templates, a consulting company presentation can effectively communicate targeted strategies for reaching and engaging specific customer segments. This approach aids businesses in focusing their marketing efforts more efficiently, tailoring products, services, and messaging to meet the unique needs of each segment. Examples of templates we can use are the PAM TAM SAM SOM model, a target market diagram, the VALS framework, or generic market segmentation slides.

Marketing Mix Strategy (4Ps)

The Marketing Mix Strategy (4Ps) templates help consultants delineate how each component (Product, Price, Place, and Promotion) can be optimized to meet the target market’s needs and achieve a competitive advantage. This, in turn, allows us to provide recommendations on product development, pricing strategies, distribution channels, and promotional tactics.

Alternatively, we can work with more complete frameworks, like the 7Ps Marketing Mix or the 8Ps Marketing Mix.

Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty Analysis

One commonly asked consultancy service is to explore customer satisfaction and brand loyalty, and for that reason, presenters can work with customer lifecycle templates, which explore the process from a buying need to a recurring consumer of a brand.

If the issue regarding customer satisfaction is linked to customer service, then consultants can evaluate factors like the customer service maturity level – going from cost-based strategies to customer service that adds value to a consumer’s life.

Customer satisfaction surveys are typically conducted in this kind of analysis, and results can be presented using templates like the NPS Gauge Infographic.

Sustainability and ESG Consulting Templates

Sustainability and ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Consulting Templates are slides that help presenters communicate sustainable practices and ESG principles into their organization’s operations. They assess the importance of environmental impact, social responsibility, and governance practices, becoming actionable tools to define sustainable goals, measure progress, and communicate achievements.

Sustainability Strategy and Roadmap

Sustainability Strategy and Roadmap consultancy PowerPoint templates allow us to outline an organization’s approach to integrating sustainable practices into its business operations. Consultants work with these templates to present a structured plan, from setting sustainability goals to implementing initiatives and monitoring progress.

ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) Reporting Framework

ESG slide templates enable consultants to communicate a company’s commitment to sustainability, ethical practices, and social responsibility to stakeholders. By showcasing achievements, challenges, and future goals, these templates facilitate transparent dialogue with investors, customers, and regulatory bodies. They are crucial for companies looking to demonstrate accountability, enhance their reputation, and attract sustainability-conscious investors and consumers.

Circular Economy Strategy

In our final category, we can find the circular economy strategy templates, which aim to redefine growth and focus on positive society-wide benefits. These templates enable consultants to illustrate how businesses can transition from a linear “take-make-waste” model to a circular economy model that designs out waste, keeps products and materials in use, and regenerates natural systems. By detailing strategies for sustainable product design, recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing, the templates help visualize companies’ steps to become more sustainable and efficient.

Creating a tailored consulting slide deck from scratch involves hours of planning, including which information you intend to deliver, which graphic outlook will engage the audience, how you will highlight key factors, and the list goes on. Therefore, we invite you to explore the possibilities that consulting presentation templates offer regarding reduced effort and better time management for your presentations. All the designs shown in this article can be fully customized to the presenter’s requirements or preferences.

[1] Alexander, E. R. (1982). Design in the Decision-Making Process . Journal Name, 14(3), 279-292.

[2] Rasiel, E. (1999). The McKinsey Way . McGraw-Hill.

[3] Sibbet, D. (2010). Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity . Wiley.

[4] Baret, S., Sandford, N., Hida, E., Vazirani, J., & Hatfield, S. (2013). Developing an effective governance operating model: A guide for financial services boards and management teams . Deloitte Development LLC.

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