The salesman is dead. Long live the consultative salesman! Episode 2

A recent study published by the American consultancy Forrester predicts the imminent death of the field sales profession in the face of e-commerce. However, a different outcome is possible for BtoB field salespeople, provided they rethink their positioning and adopt a consulting posture, notably through the quality of their questioning and a more "customer-centric" approach.

What are the other components of the sales consultant posture, and how can you make them your own? That's what we'll be looking at in Part 2.

Position yourself as an expert

While listening is the key to creating the conditions for a relationship of trust, you also need to know how to demonstrate your added value.

In the corporate world, the formalization of a project often proves delicate and complex. Even though they are becoming more and more knowledgeable and autonomous, customers still expect their sales representatives to have the cutting-edge expertise they need to refine the contours of their project.

Buyers are looking for sales people capable of challenging them: analyzing a situation, carrying out a diagnosis and modeling the data collected. This will enable them to formalize and synthesize the guiding ideas of their project, and thus help them to "sell" it internally.

 

The sales consultant must be perceived as an expert, from whom the customer expects advice. But be careful not to confuse "advice" with "solution proposal"... That would again be tantamount to trying to sell something!

The expert salesperson must express and take responsibility for his or her convictions on a given subject, and lead the other person to react in turn. They must be able to deliver a point of view and develop it, not to convince, but to shed factual light on their customer's concerns.

The salesperson's contribution to value can also be measured by a "profitability" approach.

 

All companies are concerned with return on investment. The sales consultant's job is to help the customer bring his idea to fruition, so he needs to offerindicators to measure the effectiveness and profitability of his solution - the famous ROI.

In this way, the customer is no longer focused on the cost of the solution, but on the financial gain or savings it will bring.

Rely on reformulating the customer's issues

Last but not least, sales consultants demonstrate their value by their ability to integrate and reformulate the issues and concerns of their contacts.

On the one hand, reformulation helps to avoid misinterpretation: if the sales rep has missed something important, the other person will have the opportunity to clarify it without feeling attacked. On the other hand, a well-mastered reformulation demonstrates professionalism and leads the other person in the desired direction. Last but not least, rephrasing the issues at stake will give rise to new questions that will allow the introduction of new ideas, suggestions or proposals.

By bringing together all the components mentioned above (quality of questioning, contribution of expertise, demonstration of the added value of his solution, reformulation of the customer's challenges, etc.), the sales consultant creates the conditions for a state of mind based on collaboration and partnership.

Register as a partner

The advisory role requires us toact like a consultant,adopting a benevolent attitude towards our customers to help them define their needs, move their project forward and make it a reality.

In a company, it's a good idea to be accompanied by an outside consultant to help you "sell" your idea internally and convince the forces involved and concerned.

It's important to partner with him in the success of the project, and to offer to act as an orchestra conductor for the various teams, making him understand - tactfully - that salespeople and customers share the same interest: the progress of the project.

Identify decision-makers

In this pre-sales/sales phase, the salesperson also needs toidentify the people involved in the decision, and then gather their vision of the process underway. This step will enable the salesperson to remove any obstacles, give meaning to the process, encourage buy-in, and begin to commit all parties to the decision. Naturally, he will keep his privileged interlocutor informed of the progress of his contacts to consolidate the relationship of trust.

The sales consultant may propose "working meetings", or "co-construction workshops", or even a "meeting to summarize understanding of the issues".

These meeting formats are far more effective and have a far greater impact than the classic "presentation meetings", "discovery meetings" and "proposal handovers", which are still the panacea of the all-purpose salesperson.

Nevertheless, customers sometimes close the door to this mode of operation. We need to analyze the real reasons for such a refusal. But very often, a blockage of this kind is a sign of a lack of desire to work together. The question then arises as to whether or not to continue discussions with the customer. In other words: Go / No Go?

A No Go will enable you to avoid spending unnecessary time and commercial energy on a deal that has little chance of succeeding, so that you can concentrate on more promising projects.

In a nutshell...!

The Consulting posture relies above all on the salesperson's ability to put aside his or her need to sell and concentrate solely on listening and advising.

In this way, the act of sale becomes an act of non-sale.

 

And this paradigm shift is not insignificant! Positioning oneself as an expert cannot be improvised or decreed. Salespeople wishing to adopt a consultative posture must cultivate and develop additional interpersonal skills, which have become indispensable today to win a customer's trust, including: mastering their discourse, behavior and rhetoric, and the art of questioning and bouncing back.

On this note, we wish you very fine sales ! Sorry, very good advice... ; )

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