Empower Your IT Sales Team with a Consultative Selling Model for IT

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hi again folks let me share a few more thoughts about what consultative selling is and this triangle is helpful to me and and it basically says the transactional selling is sort of on the bottom of this pyramid and consultative selling is on the top of the pyramid and in transactional selling you know you when somebody walks into your shoe store to take that sort of silly example um there's you and your needs and the customer and their needs and they don't overlap a lot you know you want them to walk out with as many dollars of shoes as possible right and that's that's a transaction your needs are really not that overlapping are not that shared as you go up the pyramid of towards consultative selling those needs begin to overlap and you because this is what it means to be a consultant but when you when you are a consultant to somebody you are sharing their needs and and and you might be surprised to find when you have that trusting relationship they are actually interested in your needs the customer or client and consulting language becomes interested really in helping you succeed so it's like a marriage rather than a one-night stand right a date you go from dating to marriage as you go up that pyramid that's one way one way to look at it and and there's there's a thing about anxiety you know a lot of us when we think about selling we become anxious immediately and it's probably because we've had bad experiences with salespeople who made us anxious right you know the classic insurance salesman who gives us foot in the door won't take it out that that is a sure sign of not having established that consultative relationship of that being a transactional relationship with different needs at the bottom of the bearden is much more anxiety and it's why we're anxious about selling at the top of the pyramid there's this sort of natural marriage relationship where you and the client are thinking together not thinking alone right solving problems together you become part of the problem solving process for your client so there's less anxiety and the higher you go on that consultative relationship the higher the value service product you tend to sell if you are going to be the major software provider for a corporation and you may sell them you know a contract for providing software that's a million dollars a year it's not unusual right I sold million dollar consulting contracts for major corporations and if you if you do that you know that's high value and it tends to be over a longer period of time right and I'd like you to think about your own motivation and I've done this thing when I was about to meet with a potential client and this may sound funny to some of you but but I would meditate for a moment and I would ask myself what what is my own motivation as I go in to meet with this guy what is foremost in my mind and I would condition myself I would sort of train myself and I would tell myself to approach this client in the spirit of service not in the spirit of getting but in the spirit of giving thinking about how am I going to help meet that client's needs how am I gonna make them successful and I think people can sense I think people have sort of a radar if you will where they can sense what your motivation is and they can sense when your motivation is sincerely to help them not to help you so think about that that spirit of service if you will as you go to meet with meet with a client and I think that spirit of service helps you build that trusting relationship and as you do that I think you both build your own brand equity and we're gonna talk about your own brand and brand equity more and social capital the value of relationships is your social capital and your social capital is the sum of your relationships if you are a consultative seller you'll build that and that's what really gets you to the top of an organization let me just kind of summarize I think consultative selling is and its first as we've talked about developing that relationship of trust and they will trust you not just if you're approaching them in the spirit of service but in fact if you are competent and I will talk more about this because it's absolutely critical to building your brand you have to in fact be competent in your area of expertise and you have to be able to demonstrate that competence to them it's a passionate focus on the customers needs not just your needs and if you're passionately cook focus on somebody else's needs you have to be a great listener we're going to talk about listening skills you have to be a deep listener really thinking about the meaning behind what somebody is saying there's always at the surface of what somebody's saying and there's always what's going on behind there and another way to think about consultative selling is to think about as shared problem-solving we'll talk more as we talk about the process and and I want you to think about your ability to sit with a client and not be thinking about what you're gonna sell them but be thinking about the process of problem-solving with them the moment they think you're really helping them solve problems you're in the door you're you're on your way to that relationship so that's my definition of consultative selling let's now look at the curriculum of the course and how we're gonna get there