who does your team report to?” try, “can you help me understand your org structure?” this could spark a larger conversation about cross-departmental needs, organizational dynamics, and more personal challenges that will enable you to differentiate yourself. High-impact questions like this also typically result in greater opportunity to cross-sell and upsell.
Consultative sales process
the stages of the consultative selling process are similar to the standard sales cycle with a key distinction: while the standard sales cycle tends to be transactional and accelerate toward closing a deal, the consultative sales process is more relational. It’s based on the notion that you have to slow down to understand the buyer’s context, and that’s what ultimately accelerates the deal in the end. Consultative selling is founded on trust. So this sales process is about earning that trust, not just inking your next deal.
Let’s say you work for calls r us selling call center software. You have a lead for a buyer, max, who is the cio at awesome outfits, an apparel retailer. After a recent acquisition, awesome outfits is thinking about modernizing its call center technology to handle its newly-increased call volume. Here’s a look at this process from a consultative sales perspective:
step 1: create a plan for your discovery call
you’ve booked a discovery sales call with max and have researched him and his company. In preparation, you write up a call plan that clearly states your goal for the call and what is required to achieve it. Your plan might look something like this:
list your desired outcome. In this case, you want to gain access to max’s manager who makes all purchasing decisions for the company. For this to happen, max must feel confident making the introduction.
Ask high-impact questions. During the call with max, you focus on open-ended questions. You gently probe, “your company has been in acquisition mode. Tell me about the impact it’s had on you as a leader.