Consultative selling the hardest and easiest way to sell
What do you get when you combine a salesperson with a consultant? The most powerful method of selling consultative selling.
Consultative selling combines your personality, sales skills, and interpersonal skills into a style that makes prospects most likely to buy. Its primary components are:
Finding and understanding the customer's needs.
Being the customer's partner by making the transition from salesperson to resource.
Helping customers achieve their business objectives, sometimes through the use of your product or service.
Believing that your business, product and service are the best.
Believing in yourself, and believing that you are the best.
Having a positive attitude about yourself, your product, and your customer, which makes the first five components work to everyone's benefit.
There are no steps to learn. This is not a system. Consultative selling is a style and a strategy.
Below are the basic elements of consultative selling. I challenge you to read them a new way. The old way is to read and say: "I know that." The new way is to ask yourself: "How good am I at that?" If you read these elements and evaluate yourself from one to five on each one, you will emerge with a personalized game plan for evolving to consultant status. Here are the rating categories: 1=poor, 2=average, 3=good, 4=very good, and 5=the greatest.
If you are serious about achieving consultative sales success, I recommend you post each element on this list someplace where you can see it every day. Create an action plan for each rule that you rate four or below. Work on two of your strengths and one of your deficiencies each day. Act on these principles until they become a way of life. You don't get great at selling or consulting in a day you get great day by day.
Establish and maintain a positive attitude. This "I can do it" state of mind, which is with you all the time and makes others want to spend time with you, is the first rule of life. Your commitment to a positive attitude will put you on an unstoppable path to success. A positive attitude is not just a thought process it's a daily commitment. Get one.
Develop the ability to set and exceed goals. The true professional is dedicated, well disciplined and self-directed. How's your ability to exceed goals?
Take pride in what you do. Pride shows. It generates an enthusiasm that attracts people to you and your business.
Be able to accept responsibility. Customers want someone who will take responsibility for all transactions a "I'll handle it personally" person.
Be able to listen. Your customer wants to tell you what he needs and how to sell to him. Just use the right questions and listen to understand.
Have confidence in your abilities. Confidence in what you do and who you are breeds client confidence to buy what you sell.
Have a personal ethic that translates into hard work, truthfulness, sincerity, and living up to your commitments every day.
Know the science of selling. Even though most sales are driven by the quality of your relationship with your customer, mastering each element and fundamental sales rule makes closing sales more probable.
Be prepared to sell. Consultative selling assumes that the salesperson is prepared with ideas, information, tools, proposals, product knowledge, customer knowledge and industry knowledge.
Know your product, business, and industry this is a given for any professional in any field.
Know your customer's business and industry. Such knowledge is a prerequisite for having an intelligent conversation with a prospect, and your best chance to build credibility. It's not how much you know about you it's how much you know about them.
Have advance knowledge of your prospect. Pre-planning all sales calls will give you the competitive edge in selling. The more you know about your customer, the more impressive you'll be.
Know the prospect's buying process. If you don't know how your prospect makes a decision to buy, why start the sale? prospect's buying process?
Oops ran out of space stay tuned for the rest of the story next week.
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of "The Sales Bible," and "Customer Satisfaction is Worthless, Customer Loyalty is Priceless." President of Charlotte-based Buy Gitomer, he gives seminars, runs annual sales meetings, and conducts training programs on selling and customer service. Inquiries should be emailed to salesman@gitomer.com or faxed to the WBJ at (48 22) 646-0576.
