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Consultative Selling
Are you into consultative selling?
Maybe you don’t even know what it means!
Either way, consultative selling is based around you acting like a consultant rather than a salesperson when you meet your prospects.
Instead of just presenting your service or product and going on about how great it as and so on and so forth, consultative selling is a solutions based, fact finding approach that finds out what problems your client is facing, the reasons behind them, the impact it is having and only then do you discuss how you can help them.
Consultative selling is all about finding out and gaining a greater understanding of your prospects needs. It not only involves asking questions about their problems and needs but it also includes finding out about the company, their operation, the politics – you name it! Anything to gain a better understanding so that you can come back with a client based, customised solution.
This in turn leads to a conversation rather than a sales pitch and promotes greater rapport, trust and likeability between you and your prospect.
The consultative aspect of the meeting lies with the sales-person's ability, experience and expertise, to 'consult' with the buyer in developing a solution.
Probably the most famous consultative selling method is Neil Rackams SPIN™ technique
The S in the SPIN™ stands for situation.
Here, you and the prospect discuss, explain and probe the current situation
The P stands for problem.
This is when you explore what problems the client is facing or could have as a result of the situation
The I in the SPIN™ stands for implications.
So you have discussed the situation and the problem but what does it actually mean? What is the impact? What will it ultimately cost the prospect in terms of money, morale, productivity, company and personal reputation, growth and so on?
Finally the N stands for a need.
If you have done your job correctly by exploring the current situation, assessing the problems and determining the implication it has created a need for guess what?
Yes, you’ve got it – your product or service!
Now that doesn’t mean that after you have got that out of the way that now just deliver your normal sales pitch but instead you use all of the data and information that the prospect has given you and present your product in relation to the situation, the problem and the implications.
For example:
“Mr Prospect, you mentioned earlier that in the past you have ran sales training courses and they have been a good 2 days but then the salespeople do not implement what they know is that right?
They reply with yes!
You then come in with:
“Well, I recommend that we split the 2-day course into 2 x 1 day sessions. That way your salespeople will not be away from their day jobs for 2 consecutive days when they could be making money for you plus what we will do is set assignments and techniques for them to implement in-between each session so that they will have to come back and explain their findings. That way the learning will be implemented and we can share the experiences and results at the beginning of session 2 – would that help you?”
Consultative selling requires a different mindset.
Go into each sales meeting and view yourself as a problem solver or consultant.
Focus completely on the prospect, get to know their situation, their problems and the impacts of these and then present your solution in light of what has been said.
Good luck!
Note that SPIN ® and SPIN SELLING ® methods and materials
are subject to copyright and intellectual property
control of the Huthwaite organisations of the US and
UK. SPIN ® and SPIN SELLING ® methods and materials
are not to be used in the provision of training and
development products and services without a licence
About the MD
 | About Sean Sean McPheat founded MTD Sales Training and has built the company up from scratch to over 20 trainers today. Sean a is a much sought after sales trainer and consultant himself and he is well regarded as the authority in improving bottom line sales performance. Sean is regularly featured in the media which has included interviews and documentaries on CNN International, BBC, ITV and Arena Magazine. Interesting Links |
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