If you are in the business of generating demand and getting appointments with potential prospects, try crafting your words differently to make the prospect feel less threatened that they are being “sold” and far more comfortable with having a collaborative discussion with you to evaluate the options and implications of their potential solution options.
Category Archives: Consultative selling
Influencing Your Client’s Evaluation and Decision Process
The average sales person (and team) tends to be overly deferential to their clients. Which would be a sound strategy if the average client had a clear idea of how to evaluate their alternatives to ultimately choose the best among alternatives.
Segmentation Strategy: Do You Know Where Your Gun is Aimed?
Assume you are about to go hunting on 500 acres of land that is split into parcels with a different kind of animal in each parcel (i.e. squirrels in one parcel and Moose in another).
Don’t Expect Your Technical & Sales Support People to “Sell”
In every sales-oriented organization we need to find ways to help our technical and support resources recognize that they can be an integral part of the selling process and still be comfortable with their own style. They don’t have to be pushy; they don’t have to be bold; they don’t even have to ask for the order. In fact, I would argue that they (and we) would be far better off if they didn’t do these things and stopped feeling pressure to “sell.”
UnSelling ™ – Straight out of the Consultant’s Playbook
While at Accenture I recall being struck by how infrequently great consultants actually “sell” in the traditional sense of the word. Did you happen to notice that “close” or “sell” isn’t listed above? The reason: when done well, consulting doesn’t require a lot of pressure or slick sales-oriented tactics – because we build enough credibility and trust to make these techniques unnecessary.