Consultative Sales vs. Relationship Selling
The world has changed dramatically and buyers behaviour has been shifted as well. Buyers no longer looking for information. They already have that. What they need is to call someone who knows more than marketing collateral and can add tremendous value to the conversation.
In this blog, I share my observations on how the sales conversation has changed and what skills are now needed for a sales person to become successful in the sales process. These skills are transferable between startups and established organisations and are globally adopted by the new generation of sales people.
Plus, I will put my focus on technology and software market in a B2B environment which the sales cycle is longer and more complex.
In the past . . .
First, let’s have a look at the state of sales in the past, specially up until 4–5 years ago. During past centuries, we have seen a lot of changes in the way that sales conversations took place and the types of sales people who lead the conversation in terms of characteristics and skills. During 90’s, we have seen a wave of sales driven approach and hard push so organizations can sell. Cold calling, door knocking and variety of closing technics developed to convince people what they need and why they need these products.
The focus was on tactics that can be more effective on changing the behaviour of buyers on a short term. Sales driven culture was the winning strategy for organizations and sales people were dominating the organizational chart. They were the kings of the company.
During 2000s, the market was shifted towards marketing. Marketing became the new hot thing and marketers started to test new approaches and conversations and had more impact on the buyers personas. The new ad design, marketing campagines and events, product launches and promotions became the new norm. Sales people still rely on closing technics to close the sale and building meaningful relationships with their customers. Relationship building was and still is one of the key components of sales and people with this one skill, can break into sales roles. Everybody looking to build a strong relationship with the prospects so they can expect the sales to happen of the back of that relationship.
Now . . .
In the past 10 years, we already entered the era of branding. Branding is all about who we are as an organizations and how different we are delivering value to the market place. What is our relationship with our customers and what to expect when dealing with us. This is what we promise to our customer based around our product quality and customer experience. In this era, buyers no longer need a relationship with a sales person to know more about the product. They can learn it themselves. In fact, they can become master of that product or solution within days thanks to the internet and lot of short and long courses that exists. Buyers can get all the info they need even on the competition and can educate themselves without the need to ask anybody any question.
This means buyers start the buying process way earlier that before without sellers to know anything about this. This means sellers can influence the buyers choice by providing outstanding content and education on how their products work and why they are the best choice.
Buyers can even go ahead and try the softwares themselves without need to be involved with the tech team at sellers side. until . . .
Until they encounter few questions on how this product react to specific scenarios.
Only at this stage, they start engaging directly with the sales team. Now, you can imaging who they want to reach out to. Not a relationship builder, but an expert.
What to expect from a relationship builder
Relationship builder naturally builds life long relationship and this is their first and only strategy with their prospects. They are friendly and can make friends in any type of environment. They are loveable and fun to be around. However, the actual value that they can bring to the table is near zero. For every technical discussion, these sales people need to bring a Pre Sales resource so they can handle more advanced topics. Naturally, they cannot answer any tech questions and they always rely on other resources to complete the tasks and move the deal forward in the sales process. Imagine when the prospect needs important information or education, they have to get it from someone else. This means relationships will not move the deal into the next steps of sales process. Knowledge and expertise do.
What to expect from consultative sales person
Despite the myths in the technology industry, not all the engineers are interverted characters. There are lot of talents out there that are great with technology from technical stand point and also outstanding with people as well. They are as hungry for money or fame as sales hunters and will change the role and will shift to sales to get the best of both worlds: sales and engineering.
These guys normally start in engineering roles, such as developer or network engineer, and then will move to pre sales roles to get exposure to sales engagements. Later down the track, they move to product management, enterprise architect or sales management roles depending on their preference.
As can be imagined, during the sales process, these people can add a lot of value and engage independantly with stake holders. And because they know what they talk about, they are respected by buyers and known to be honest and transparent.
What a consultative sales person do on a daily basis
These are the daily activities that normally a consultative sales person do and if their role has been designed carefully, there should be no challenge motivating these people and keeping them motivated. Remember, technical sales person is still a sales person.
- Prospecting
A great consultative sales person is hungry for new business and has no fear of cold calling and reaching out to strangers and ask questions. These people lock a specific time in their calendar, every day so they can do cold calling and sending emails to people they do not know. They are relenlessly seeking new opportunities and have absolute faith in themselves that they know the solution of the problem way better than everybody else. This give them confident in their behaivor so they can transfer this sense to their prospects as well.
- Connecting
Consultative sales people can connect with different stakeholders and talk their own language. They can talk to technical people and talk about the architecture of the solution briefly and identify pain points immidiately. The also can connect with business people and ask questions on the business metrics that need to be improved. They can quickly qualify leads and make sure that their time is well spend.
- Discovery
Consultative sales people can run great discover sessions in which they actually stay silent and pick up important information. Both from technical and business perspective, they can pick up important information that they can build their business case around and draft a strong proposal to offer customer.
- Presentation and public speaking
Consultative sales experts are great presenters and they are normally trained to be good public speakers. They are comfortable in front of people and with their killer confident can deliver their tailored proposal and connect the dots for their customers. They can easily go through all the potential objections, both technical and business level, and make their points very clear.
- Closing
There are a lot of myths and books around how to close deals. Trust me if you go thorugh all the previous steps of sales process with confident and high level of experties, closing deals will not be a big challenge. Although, technical sales people know very well how to use assumptive close and ask for perchase order once they get to the end of sales cycle.
- Unlock upsell and cross sell
Consultative sales people are great at unlocking new opportunities by asking the right questions and their knowledge of existing solutions and also the product road map.
It is worth to note that new generation of sales experts are coming to the market which already has deep technical knowledge and also great people skills. These talents adding a lot of value to both customers and their respective employers by bringing new ways of selling.
About Author:
Houman Asefi is recognized authority on technology sales and startups, award finalist blogger (http://www.houmanasefi.com/) focusing on building and scaling sales strategy and making sure companies achieve their targeted revenue.
Contact Info: Houman Asefi Phone Number: +61 452 219 022 Email: houman.asefi@gmail.com Blog: http://www.houmanasefi.com/
