SALES TRAINING
of the consultative approach is to cre- ate alignment, even as you are selling your offering. Display the slide you made and ask
At Your Next Sales Meeting GEOFFREY JAMES
Below are practical steps to improve your team’s ability to sell using a consultative approach. This sales meeting should take about an hour.
Decide whether your company and sales team have the potential to use the true consultative approach to selling. If your company sells com- modity products or your average sales team member lacks business acumen, taking the consultative approach may not be a viable strategy. If you decide to proceed, then,
before the meeting, create a handout showing the eight stages of the cus- tomer’s decision process. Also create a slide based on a concept of the client/customer decision process. Open the meeting with energy and enthusiasm. Explain that you’re going to be discussing some impor-
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tant issues that will influence the way the entire team approaches the sales process. Ask your team to participate fully, because the potential benefits will be enormous. Using the handout, walk the team through the customer decision-making process. In all probability, your team mem- bers will already understand much of this, but emphasize that there is supposed to be an alignment – and that such alignment often proves elusive. Explain the basic concept of the consultative approach and how it differs from other so-called con- sultative-selling and solution-selling models. Emphasize that the purpose
the team members to state the level at which they are currently selling. Are they vendors? Suppliers or providers? Or are they value-creating partners? If they’re unsure about what a value- creating partner is, then explain that value-creating partners are included in strategic discussions and always have the inside track on the sale of any relevant offering. Open the floor for discussion. Get buy-in from the team that it is pos- sible to take a more consultative approach to selling and that taking such an approach would benefit each team member and the firm as a whole. At this point, you should be about 20 minutes into the meeting. Explain that it takes significant business acumen to successfully take a consultative approach to selling. Give the team members three minutes to build a personal devel- opment plan that strengthens their understanding of their customers’ strategic issues. Ask for volunteers to share their plans. After a third of the room has done so, ask the team members to hone their plans using the best ideas they heard from the other team members. Give them three minutes for this. When they are done, make a commit- ment to review each plan personally with each team member. Open the floor for discussion of
the kind of support the team needs from management and the firm to be able to successfully sell in this man- ner. Working with the team, prioritize these requests so the easiest and most important can be addressed soon. Make a commitment to the team to work on these issues to en- sure success. Share your plans to create a mea-
surement system that will allow the team (and you) to track progress. Thank the team members for their participation, and end the meeting with enthusiasm.
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