Consultative Based Sales and Marketing to Create the Best Buying Experience
Consultative based sales and marketing aligned with how customers buy, leads to the best buying experience. The beginning of the best customer experience.
Many people ask, “Do I really need to use consultative based sales and marketing with my product or service?”
Our response is to consider how customers discover their needs and evaluate your types of offerings.
- Does the customer already understand how to use your products and services?
- How easy is it for your customers to determine the overall value of using your products and services to solve their needs?
- Perhaps more important, is the ability to help solve business needs unique to your products and services.
An example may help using two extremes. First, an office manager purchases a printer for the CEO. The needs are easily identified and a decision can be made quickly in terms of a buy sell cycle. It can even be done on line, if desired, without interacting with a person.
Second, a company is going to source a vendor for all their copy machines. In this case, the buy-sell cycle will begin with a discovery phase to determine the business needs. It is during the discovery phase where a consultative approach can help identify unique ways to satisfy needs.
Identified needs can short list the potential vendors a buying committee/person will discuss with during the evaluation phase.
If an RFQ/RFP is then used to source a final vendor, the preferred vision of a solution, (which typically includes the preferred vendor), is within the specifications.
These examples help to identify where to consider using consultative sales and marketing. Those products where a discovery phase will help identify needs and build a better vision of a solution based on value. It is the value portion which helps frame the final scope of supply around the needs which require the capabilities of your offering.
At this point, many of our clients say, “OK, I get it, we need consultative based sales people, what’s next”?
Let’s go back to the beginning of the buy sell cycle.
If marketing messages are not focused on helping the customer identify and discover
unknown ways of solving their needs, marketing may be out of alignment with sales.
Worst yet, a web site may actually encourage a feature rich conversation
and help create RFP/RFQ’s any competitor can bid on.
Consultative based marketing uses web sites to help develop and nurture prospects to be prepared to have conversations with sales based on their business usage, needs and value.
To help avoid the common feature function wars in the buy sell cycle where nobody wins. Not the customer and not the vendor. We need sales and marketing focused on the customer and creating conversations around business usage and applications.
Consultative sales and marketing methods can help customers focus on discovering new ways to satisfy their needs based on value. Positioning your unique capabilities based on business usage and value in the customers mind as they develop a Vision of a Solution.