Consultative Selling

  • What is the Best Sales Process for Increasing Sales?

    • July 14, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Companies have terrific results when they implement Baseline Selling, and last week a well-known expert asked, “What is the big secret that makes Baseline Selling so powerful?”  He thought it would make for a great article discussion, so let’s attempt to answer that question by starting with a few questions of my own.

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  • One Thing Missing from The New Way of Selling – Part 2

    • July 2, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Selling is still selling and while a lot has changed in the last 10 years, a lot of it hasn’t.  I’m a social seller.  Social sellers get found, find prospects and connect using a myriad of social selling tools.  But once a meeting has been scheduled, the social must be dropped in favor of the selling.   A prospect should only be aware of a terrific conversation, but process and methodology must be hidden backstage.

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  • The One Sales Question I’ve Been Wrong About for Years

    • July 1, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I must be a moron. Stupid. Dumb. Blind. Certainly, I couldn’t have been paying attention or it wouldn’t have taken me 28 years to figure this one out!

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  • This is the One Thing Missing from the New Way of Selling

    • June 20, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Prospects aren’t ready to buy at this point in their process, they’re just getting finished with looking at their options!  Salespeople don’t have qualified or closable opportunities at this point, but they’re acting as if they did, creating and sending unqualified proposals, making assumptions, and hoping for the best.

    What’s Missing?

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  • Could it Really be The Death of SPIN Selling?

    • April 10, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The author wrote that since most prospects today know what they want, they won’t rehash all of the needs and decisions that got them to this point, and as a result, a salesperson won’t be able to back them up to an earlier stage of the sales process to implement SPIN or any other questioning strategy.

    Well, maybe.

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  • Are Inside Sales and Consultative Selling Mutually Exclusive?

    • April 7, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    In this discussion, we’ll focus on group #2, traditional inside sales, where salespeople field incoming calls from existing loyal customers, existing disloyal customers, and potential customers.

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  • Consultative Selling, Commitment and Training – Like Oil & Water

    • March 14, 2014
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We recently evaluated a sales force where the salespeople had, on average, only 18% of the attributes of a consultative seller.

    “How could that be?”, asked the Director of Sales.  “Achieve Global has come in 3 times in 3 years to teach consultative selling!”

    That could be the punchline, but it’s not.

    So, why didn’t the training on consultative selling stick?  There are reasons aplenty!

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  • What is the Most Difficult Part of the Sales Process?

    • December 6, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    We discussed the various challenges associated with all three milestones and when all was said and done, everyone agreed that the midpoint, that crucial point in time where compelling reasons to buy must be identified, is the most difficult for salespeople.

    Why?  Well a quick look at the following list of mini-milestones, that must be accomplished in order to get to the point where compelling reasons will be shared, tells the whole story.  How many of your salespeople can do all of this in their first meeting?

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  • Some Truths (You May Not Like) About Relationship Selling

    • November 4, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are 4 possible relationship scenarios:

    Strong relationship and you have the business. 
    Strong relationship, but you don’t have the business.
    Lack of relationship and you have the business. 
    Lack of relationship and you don’t have the business. 

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  • Experiment – Which Sales Approach is Really More Effective?

    • October 28, 2013
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    During the past 90 days, I have been secretly selling multiple ways.  On one third of our opportunities, I have been selling the way we teach – using a formal, structured sales process with a consultative approach.  On another third of our opportunities (inbound leads),  I have experimented with a more transactional approach, although even that has a consultative element because I can’t help but ask some good questions.  It simply means that I show and tell much earlier than normal.  With the remaining third of our leads, I have experimented with allowing the buyer to dictate the process.   My buyer-dictated approach included a little push-back because I can’t allow a potential client to take the wrong approach to a solution.  

    Want to know what happened?  Look at the table below:

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