Ep. 285 Strategy Advice for Consultative Selling

The consultative sales often involve a longer sales process. Joe Pici shares strategies for closing the deal and increasing up-sales.

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Get ready for an unfair advantage over your competition. This is The Sales Edge podcast. Where globally recognized sales expert and trainer Joe Pici helps you sharpen your skills for booking more appointments and closing more deals. And now here’s your host Joe Pici.

Joe Pici (JP):

One of the reasons the word sales, or selling creates an adverse reaction to others, or even ourselves is to style, or The by which the sales professional executes welcome to the sales, edged podcast. This is podcast 285. I am your host, Joe peachy. We want to thank our sponsors Pici and Piciink, which is a speaking coaching training consulting, firm specializes in helping our clients sell for higher margins. Getting further, target market book, more point, and close more business, and sell more virtual e.com, which is our membership platform. Every Thursday night. I’m out there live doing speaking coaching training for you. But we want to thank you more and more. We’re growing around the globe getting more and more downloads affecting more people, getting people better results. So today we’re going to talk about sales, you know, they basically there’s two types of sales out there. You know, you have your transactional sales, transactional sales is usually a short term.

Dale that the client or customer knows what they want. This is usually a product or price based philosophies like the one call close. Get to yes or no as quickly as possible. These are the philosophies used in this technique. A lot of people use it and inbound sales. A lot of people use it in telemarketing sales, whereby they scream people have opted. 10 people want a particular product or service and we’re making that contact but strictly it’s the product and price that the consumer is most concerned about whereas consultative sales or some people call it consultative. This is more complex. This is long-term sales cycle, this involves collaboration between the buyer and the seller. The seller needs to

Stand the industry. The client is in, they need to understand the concerns and the needs of that client, even understand. Strictly. The desired result that, that client is looking for in a need to establish, understand timeline, you know, the key to the to this whole thing as a consultative seller is to position yourself as a consultant. Mentor. You know, I talked to people time, I talk to business owners. So many times, I hear this, I didn’t open up my business to get into sales. I didn’t want to be a peddler. I didn’t want to be in sales. I don’t want to be in sales so many times, I talk to people who get into sales and because they think in terms of transactional, they really don’t feel good about themselves at the end of the day. They feel like they’re putting somebody in a That they really don’t want. But today I’m going to give you some tips, not on the techniques of consultative sales, not on how you develop your core story, not on how you deliver, not on how you discover, but more about some keys to position yourself with these potential clients, as a consultant and a mentor. I like to say, putting yourself on.

Their side of the table. And so as you’re looking at the two different types of sales, you’re looking at the transactional, you’re looking at consultative and you’re probably if you’re listening to this podcast and if you have stayed with me for any length of time, if you attend our boot camps, if you are in the process of purchasing that huge, mega course, if you watch our videos, If you coach with me, You’re probably leaning towards consultative sales. So, let’s look at a couple things here, that separate transactional tuck consultative. The first one is in a priority. What is the priority of the salesperson? A transactional salesperson is all about, get the order, close the deal, move the product BT competitors, price. Like I said, this is a short.

And deal. This is very, we call it transactional. And so there’s very little in the way of Investigation. There’s very little in quote, unquote solving a problem. Whereas the consultative salesperson you want to make a difference, you want to make a difference in your clients life, and in their businesses, so, let’s talk about some of the things that making a difference incapsulate. We need to see ourselves as the sales professional. As a change agent. We need to be a specialist. We need to be an expert. We need to see how our Solutions can provide more traction for our clients. We need to make sure that what we do solves the clients problems and helps them to achieve their objectives. Now that ended up itself tells you tells

It’s going to be a longer meeting discussing to be a longer Life Style as far as how we deal with people. And this is also going to be a longer selling process. And so just the idea of solving problems and achieving objectives. It takes longer. To close the deal because there’s more information needed. Do we see ourselves a specialist when we look in the mirror sales professionals. What do we see? Do we see a peddler or uh, somebody that truly wants what’s best for the client? And truly is going to take the time and the expertise to do your due diligence before we offer the solution. And as, you know, as I’ve as I teach and every one of our boot camps and every one of our sales,

Product and the price does not come until the fourth stage of sales. Whereas, most transactional sales is right up front. This is what we have for you. Okay, and this is what it costs. So, in transactional sales, it’s okay. Find the product, find the customer, get the money. Whereas consultative sales is find the client. Okay, find a product or a solution that will benefit them and solve that problem. Help them achieve their objective and then were paid. So that’s one aspect. The second aspect is what we call the focus, the focus of the transactional seller is what I call Opportunity, fulfillment. There’s an opportunity and we fill it. So in other words what’s ever presented to us? That’s what

We sell we don’t give it any thought we don’t think about past that that transaction. Whereas consultative selling is demand generation at. What does that mean? Demand generation is? When we anticipate problems and issues that the client may not see, we find a need that other sales professionals other business. Owners are not focusing on We describe why our option may be necessary for them why our solution is the answer. So, let me give you a story. Let me give you an example, many, many years ago, Don and I were training at an IT voice over IP phone, internet, large National company, and we were hired to work in their call center on helping.

Their sales, people do a better job with their value proposition. Not only field calls, but then take a lot of missed calls outbound and and book meetings and sell. Okay, and so, we went in there and after a few days of training, we’re out on the floor. We’re doing the live training and it’s, we’re doing a life coaching on the run and numbers are going up. And we literally Are doing more than they even paid for. However, there were a couple things I saw. The first thing I saw was they weren’t returning phone calls because everyone was on a cue, which meant those inbound calls. It would go to the next person the next person. And so nobody wanted to make a return call because they would come off the queue. So, in demand generation, I created a system. I created a process for them by which every

Those person came off the queue for one hour a day to return to Cole’s sales went up. This is what the man generation is. Another thing was the contract was soon to be over and I was evaluating things as far as the the managers on the floor and they’re all good people. So one day on my way out. I stopped by and I won’t say her name, but she was the president and I knocked on On the door. And I said, so. And so, I said, do you have a second? She said, no, I’m extremely busy. I said, well, I’m anticipating a problem to which she stopped and she said come in and close the door. What problem? And I said our sales better when I’m here or when I’m not. And she says, will lessen. Obvious question when you’re here, sales are off the scale, but they tend to dip a little bit when you’re not and

So well, therein lies the potential issue. Now, I don’t want you to fire anyone. But I do want you to understand that your sales floor, managers are either incapable or not reinforcing. What you’re investing your money and to get those extraordinary results to which he said, what should we do? I said there’s only two things we can do in life, you fix them or firearm and she said, and I said, and I wouldn’t fire him. These people. Bleed your brand. They love your company. They’re all about. Better. They just Some gaps in their management styles and then what they’re able to do and she said, do you do Management training why? Yes. So what is demand generation? Demand generation is creating potential more work. That may not have been obvious that you’ve already established a trust with these people. You already have a relationship. You’re not starting at zero. You’re really starting on. A 50-yard line, but you still start in the same way. That’s the second thing that consultative sales. So about the third one is the responsibility of every salesperson is about value. Now, a transactional sales person communicates the value they have. So, in other words, the value, they believe they bring they just communicate that but a consultative sales rep, and

Professional and owner creates value. So how do we create value? Well, we have to look past the sale of the product and service. We have to be able to bring our clients new ideas and insights. And I find it with myself. How many times? I’ll call a client. I’ll say have you considered this even if it has nothing to do with our product or service? Are you considering this? Have you done your SWOT analysis finishing up the year? Are you doing a swap for the coming year? Have you set your goals? And so my job as a consultative sales, professional is to consistently bring value to my clients. Maybe a client likes a certain book, a certain style. Maybe they like certain training. They like certain education.

Get a book and send it to them Cinema, a link to a podcast, to a video that, you know, will create value in their life. Now. What do you get for that? What is the byproduct of creating value that any time? You pick up the phone and you call them, they will return your call and they will want to talk to you because what you brought value.

Next one, I call it differentiator most transactional salespeople. The differentiator that they look at is price. That’s what they look at and possible surface. But as a consultative salesperson, and as this person who is consultative in their approach, they have knowledge and expertise. So they are well grounded in the entire understanding of the industry. See what we want to do is we want to be our clients expert. We want our person, we want to be top of mind when they think phone sales. We wanted to think PT and PTT. When they think companies that can help people navigate the gatekeeper. We want them to think peachy and peachy. When they think we need to do better job at

Booking appointments, they think peachy and peachy. In fact, you know, whatever we do. We want to get ourselves to top of mind with that client because we want to be professionals and that’s why we have to be careful not to spread ourselves. So thin that we don’t come to be the best experts in what we do. And so the whole thing now, as a thought process, so as you’re thinking about this, the thought process, Most people and transactional sales during thinking, this the time, I’ve spent better be worth the sale and or a promotion, in other words, I better get something out of this meeting. I better get something for my sales as as opposed to the consultative. Okay. I have taken my time to think about the elements to improve the business or the personal life of my clients.

We become very client-centric. We think in terms of the client’s needs. If you look at our LinkedIn profile, you look at our website. You listen to our value proposition. You look at our link everything about peachy, peachy everything about the sales edged, everything about sell more virtually. We wanted to be client-centric, delivering results benefits and solutions. So, all of this takes you You to top a mind with your It’s and top of mind is when, when your client is thinking about your industry, what you deliver, what they need, you go to the top of the list. Not only do you provide, great Solutions and results but in no way in the philosophy and the way you handle things, you don’t use the one called close. You’re not trying to squeeze them into something. They don’t need your there with one purpose solve. Their problems. You’ll go to the top of the list and after all, isn’t that where you want to be with your clients? Not only will. This attract new clients is going to help you retain present clients. So as we start to wrap this up, do an assessment, are we transactional? Are we consultative? You know, what? I’d like you to do is, do us a favor. Can you? When you go and share this or like it? Can you make a comment?

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