The salesman is dead. Long live the consultative salesman! Episode 1

Is the field sales "species" irrevocably doomed to extinction? Or does it have a chance to adapt and survive? Here,KESTIO gives you some keys to emerging victorious from the process of natural selection!

Buyer Power!

According to the ^Forrester1 report, this upheaval is largely due to changes in customer purchasing practices and behaviors.

They now have powerful tools at their disposal, which mean they don't need a sales rep to deliver a presentation brochure: websites, social networks, comparators, e-ecommerce platforms. It's far less costly and more effective than an interview.

The widespread use of these tools has accentuated theautonomy of customers and buyers. As a result, the perception of the value of the sales profession seems to have never been so challenged.

Nevertheless, meeting with a sales representative remains necessary, but for different reasons and at different stages in the purchasing and decision-making process: to be supported in your thinking and helped in defining a need or a project, to understand the specific features of a solution, to negotiate, and finally, to benefit from advice.

 

The consulting approach therefore appears to be the best possible outcome for the sales profession, as it is through the provision of advice and expertise that salespeople demonstrate their added value. So, how can a salesperson move from a Push to a Pull approach, in other words, from a "Sales" approach to a "Consulting" posture?

How do you change (or mutate?) into the "BtoB salesperson of the future"? That's what we're going to explain in this 2-part saga...

Is the salesperson an inveterate egomaniac?

The mountaineer who, at the foot of a mountain, focuses solely on the summit and the time it will take to reach it, loses sight of what's essential: his technique, the precision of his movements, and thus his safety.

Salespeople face the same pitfall. By focusing too much on his product and his sale, he will miss his real objective: winning his customer's trust. To achieve this, they need to focus on a single objective: the quality of the exchange with their customer.

However, many factors influence the salesperson's state of mind at the start of a relationship: the anxiety of not meeting targets on time, the obsession - conscious or unconscious - with making a sale.

These factors lead him to focus on his own objectives and to distance himself from the customer's interests.

The salesperson must mentally forget about closing, and set the sole aim of initiating a quality relationship, based above all on trust. The Consulting posture involves adopting a mindset resolutely focused on the customer's interests.

Let's stop thinking like egomaniacs and become " customer centric "!

The consulting posture: the science of listening and the art of questioning

Most of the time, people are quite willing to talk about themselves, and like to talk about their business. Customers and buyers have the same desire. So we have to be interested in them. Showing interest in the person, focusing on the quality of the relationship, demonstrating empathy... all this leads your interlocutor to open up.

But is it enough to listen to a customer to discover all their secrets, and by that I mean their needs and projects? Do you become a customer's confidant overnight?

The answer is no, at least if we remain focused on finding "needs" or "problems".

By definition, a customer doesn't have a problem. On the other hand, a customer - a company - may have an ambition, wish to develop a program, optimize its resources, reinforce its growth or launch a new product...

 

And when faced with such objectives, customers don't necessarily have any fixed ideas about the levers available to them.

The primary objective is to gather information to understand and analyze the customer's environment. Data collection is king.

The essence of the consulting posture lies in the quality of questioning and the ability to bounce back on the information gathered to broaden the scope and go deeper into the issues at hand. The sales consultant must focus solely on researching and understanding the customer's issues. The art of questioning is tomake the customer aware of his or her needs, often expressed implicitly, and to formalize them into explicit requirements.

From then on, the salesperson focuses on finding the causes (the "why") and not on solving the problems (the "how").

The consulting posture also involves stepping into the customer's shoes. The salesperson must immerse himself in the discussion as if with a friend, in a disinterested way. He must assume that he has nothing to sell; he is simply there to listen and understand.

For the customer, these questions of understanding are marks of interest that reinforce trust and position the sales person as an ally rather than an adversary.

 

Listening and the art of questioning are very powerful psychological levers, enabling us to uncover much broader customer issues than a single need.

However, they are not the only components of a "consulting posture". To achieve "status" as a sales consultant and prove your worth to your customers, you'll need to develop and combine other skills (providing specialized expertise, ROI-oriented approach, reformulation of customer issues and identification of decision-makers). We'll tell you all about them in the article : the salesman is dead, long live the advisory salesman, episode 2 !

Knowing how to reposition your business can be vital in a difficult situation. Discover the different stages of this process in this webinar: