Consultative Selling: A Misnomer?

If often hear about consultative selling.

Here's the definition of consultative selling in the glossary at salesopedia.com: "An approach to personal selling emphasizing the role of the salesperson as consultant or trusted advisor, the salesperson assists the buyer to identify needs and find need-satisfaction in the product range, seeking to build long-term customer relationships leading to repeat business."

I have a problem with the term. Actually, I have two problems:

1. To my way of thinking, the term refers to selling. So why do we need the adjective "consultative" attached to it? What salesperson doesn't want to be consultative? If every salesperson wants (or needs) to be a trusted advisor and assist buyers to identify needs, then what is the real value of the term "consultative selling" over the term "selling?"

2. By using the term "consultative selling," salespeople can get confused and start thinking of themselves as consultants.

The problem is that salespeople aren't consultants - they're salespeople. A consultant gets paid a daily rate, or to complete a project. A salesperson gets paid, usually on a commission basis, for generating revenue. Although "advising" is most definitely a component of selling, a salesperson should never take their eye off the revenue-generation ball. Calling a salesperson a consultant just muddles the issue.

If you want to be a consultant, go find clients who will pay you for your expertise, experience, and knowledge. Those clients are far and few between (there are a lot of automobile sales jobs out there, but not many automobile consultant jobs). You can still use your expertise, experience, and knowledge in a sales role, but the rubber-meets-the-road task for salespeople is the generation of revenue, not giving advice (those are often two different things).

Please share your comments by clicking on "comments" below.

Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers, a B2C sales training and consulting company. Subscribe to the free Selling to Consumers Sales Tips Newsletter.

Comments

[Ian Brodie]

Hi Skip,

To be fair - the term "consultative selling" comes from an era when this type of selling was far from the norm. So you could argue that nowadays selling is almost synonymous with consultative selling - but it certainly wasn't when the phrase was coined.

And I think there is another way of selling. Ford Harding sums it up well - he describes the two styles as "Needs Based Selling" and "Value Based Selling".

In Needs Based Selling - which is what is usually described as consultative selling - the key role of the salesperson is uncovering client needs - and then shaping the solution around that. It works best when the solution is flexible enough to meet a broad range of needs (if the product can only meet a tightly defined set of needs there's not point in uncovering a different set).

In Value Based Selling, the salesperson focuses primarily on clarifying the value the product brings - and allows the prospect to figure out if they need it.

The different styles are both valid (and you could argue both elements are involved in most sales) and work best in different circumstances. Certainly in consulting, a needs-based approach usually works best unless.

Ian