The consultative salesperson is dead !!

Do you focus on how you sell or what you sell?

The art of selling is changing right before our eyes, and the age of good consultative sales reps topping the performance charts is dead.

A traditional approach to selling and marketing no longer works in today’s environment. Deals are becoming increasingly complex, and your customers have access to unprecedented information concerning your business and your products..

Google refers to it as ZMOT, or the Zero Moment of Truth. Think of all the information about you your company and your products that exists online. All of it can be found in just a few clicks.

Blogs, websites, videos, customer reviews, third party reviews, your ratings, and much more. As a result, customers are buying in innovative ways, delaying initial contact with suppliers and requiring greater consensus to move forward.

Think of it this way: When did you last walk into a mobile phone shop to make a purchase without already knowing what phone you wanted? You most probably also knew what colour, what accessories and even what contract you wanted.

For the first time ever, your customers know more about YOU than you know about THEM.

So how can your sales teams evolve and remain effective?

If customers have changed the way they buy, then we must change and evolve how we sell.

Finding a customer’s pain point and presenting a solution to help is becoming increasingly ineffective.

Exceptional sales professionals will lead with insight while educating and questioning a customer’s beliefs and assumptions.

Take a customer out of their comfort zone, question traditional practices and create vision and excitement about a new way of working.

As always, the key to success lies in your team. You must invest in bridging the skills gap and create a lasting shift in behaviour.

There are two key elements for success in this changing age:

1) Work harder on your online ratings than you do on your marketing. Test and measure your results, know what your customers are saying about you and respond FAST. Ask for positive contributions and have clearly defined strategies in place to increase your ratings.

2) When you enter a sales cycle with a prospect, remember that they are more than likely over 50% through the purchase process already. Equip your sales team with the skills and material required to educate your prospects on credible, innovative and surprising ways to operate more effectively, that challenge the current status quo, and which ultimately lead back to your USP’s and strengths.