Consultative selling approach examples in business: Definition, Types, Example and Strategies

Solve Problems in business with Consultative Selling Approach: 

• How to improve your sales?
• How to take your sales at 10X?
• How to train your team to achieve the targets by driving the sales effectively?

Consultative selling approach is the answer to all burning problems.

Consultative selling approach examples in business:

• Consultative selling approach guides salesperson to talk to customers as a consultant and find the solution to their problems.
• Product selling emphasises on product and its benefits whereas consultative selling emphasise on prospects.
• The SPIN (Situation  Pain, Implication, and Need) model should be used by salespersons to design questions for consultative approach of selling.
• The benefits of consultative selling approach are respect, effective product positing, the possibility of 10X conversion, reliable source for the customer, and upselling and cross-selling.

Types of consultative selling approach examples in business :

All the burning problems you face in selling your products or services will be answered here.

1: Consultative Selling Approach

• Consultative selling is the world’s most powerful tool of selling.
• A salesperson never represents him as a salesperson in consultative selling.
• He always represents him as a consultant.
• As a consultant, he asks questions to the customers, builds relationship, and tries to know the problem of customers.

You might have heard this:

The salesperson comes with the product. A consultant comes with a solution.

A salesperson comes with a solution for customers but before that,he asks so many questions to him/her. He asks questions to provide the solution which solves the customers’ problem.

For example:

• A doctor is a very powerful and beautiful example of a consultant.
• You visit a doctor when you get ill.
• The doctor does not directly give you a notification (prescription) of medicines without any examination.
• He asks so many questions to you. He examines you a lot. He talks to you. He asks your name. He asks about your fever.
• He does all this to properly examine you and diagnose your problem to provide you a solution.
• After that, you give the doctor his/her consultative fees.

This is a consultant.

The consultant never provides you a direct solution.

He/she first tries to understand you. He/she tries to understand your main/burning problem. He/she does this by asking a lot of questions.

Consultants ask a lot of relevant questions to the customers. They will like to know at which point customers are facing problems. They will try to find out which feature of their product helps customers in solving their problems.

2: Difference between a Normal/Product Sales and Consultative Sales

The pointers which differentiate between a normal/product sales and consultative sales are as follows:

1. In product sales, a salesperson always emphasises and talks about his/her product, its benefits, and its features.

On the other hand, a consultative salesperson puts emphasis on the prospect. A consultative salesperson talks more about prospects. He/she talks about the following:

• Who are the prospects?
• Where do they belong to?
• What do they do?
• What is their business?
• How many people work in their businesses?
• What challenges they are facing?
• For how long they are facing challenges?
• What impact of challenges they are facing on their businesses?

They talk more about prospects not about the product. They do this because they need to build up a relationship with customers.

2. A product sales always start with ‘me’ approach. It’s all about ‘me’ such as my product, my name, my company, my features, and my product benefits.

For example:

• You usually get a call from Credit Card Company.
• They say that ‘they are calling from so and so the company and providing a credit card to you.
• It has these benefits, these fees, and these features.

They talk all about their products.

On the other hand, a consultative sale is a customer-oriented approach. Sales consultants talk about customers or prospects. They always talk about customers. What are the things creating problems for customers? They have a solution for that in their product. They never flash their product in the beginning. They always try to build up a relationship by asking a lot of questions.

3. In product sales, a salesperson does the maximum talking in the whole sales conversation.

On the other hand, a consultative salesperson talks very less. The talking ratio between the customer and the consultative salesperson is 80 and 20. A consultant gives 80% chance to a customer to talk and he/she talks only 20% to the customer. He tries to ask all those questions that customers can answer in the 20% of chance. This helps the consultant to position his/her product properly.

For example:

Doctor also examines you 80%. He/she asks you questions about your ill health. He/she diagnose you to provide a solution. This is closer and more personalised.

4. In product sales, a salesperson tries every customer as a prospect. He/she tries to sell products to each and every customer. He/she does not think about:

• Who is the prospect?
• Is he/she the right customer or not?

He/she only tries to inform all customers about the product. He tries to sell the product.

On the other hand, in consultative selling, a sales consultant tries to find out right prospect by asking lots of questions such as:

• Why is he/she the right prospect?
• Who is the right prospect?

3: SPIN Model

The model helps you to know what questions you need to ask your prospects.

The SPIN model is a very powerful sales model. It will help you to prepare and design your questions in the organisation for customer interaction.

1. S -Situation: You need to ask situation-based questions from the customers.

For example:

• A machinery company has machinery setup and machines are used to work. If you talk to them and try to ask situation-based questions to them, then your questions should be:
• Equipment: What equipment/machines are you using?
• Period of equipment usage: How long have you had it?
• Purchase/leased: Did you purchased it or leased it?
• Employees using equipment: How many people/employees are using it?
• These are some basic questions that will help you in knowing current situation of this company. The above mentioned situation-based questions will help you if your customer belongs to some machinery industry.
• In the same way, you also try to note down and design situation-based questions using the SPIN model.
• As per the design of your product the questions that you should ask your customer to know the current situation of customers.

2. P – Pain: You need to ask problem-based questions from the customers. You can ask them:

• Satisfied with present equipment: Are you satisfied with your current equipment?
• Disadvantages: What are the disadvantages of the machine the way you are doing right now?
• Reliability problems: What reliability problems are you facing with your equipment?

In the same way, based on your product, you also note down and ask problem-based questions to customers while implementing the SPIN model.

In problem-based questions,  ask questions to know the problems of the customers.

3. I – Implication:

• Generally, salespersons make mistakes while they design questions.
• A normal salesperson after knowing, the problem directly jumps to the solution. Salesperson sells that product by saying that, “Solution to your problem is in the product.”
• You should be able to provide a solution equivalent to the problem and your revenue will also be equivalent to the solution.
• Here salesperson commits a big mistake of directly providing the solution to the customer’s problems.
• Implication is needed at the point where the salesperson finds outs and knows the main problem of the customer.
• It is important to find, know, and show the impact of the customer’s problem on his/her business so as to make customers aware that a small problem may leave a big impact on their business.
• This means you have more possibility of selling products and also the possibility of increasing the revenue. The questions for implication will be the following:
• Increase in overtime expense: Does your overtime expense increases when your equipment was down? This means the overtime expense of the company is increasing when the machines stop working.
• High employee training cost: Does the time of your employee is wasting in training those who are using the machines, as machines are not operating properly? Your employees are also not able to operate them properly. Do you feel that your expense is increasing in the training of employees using the machine?

The questions you ask customer regarding implications reveal if the problem is with the machine then it is also hitting the efficiency of the employees.

Your viewpoint for asking implication questions should be to make customers aware of the big problem that may cause by the existing problems.

4. N – Need: You have to ask all those things to the customer that explores or develops the customer’s need for the product.

For example:

You can ask the customer (Machinery Company) regarding the need for a machine.

• Relevance of faster machine: How do you think a faster machine may help you?
• Reduction in employee turnover: Does this machine will decrease your employee turnover? An automatic machine will need less number of employees and there will be a reduction in employee turnover.
• Reduction in expenses: Less number of employees and low employee turnover will automatically reduce the expenses.

You will ask need-based questions to customers so that you know about his/her needs.

Let’s see the SPIN  model in systematic order:

• Situation: You got to know the situation.
• Problem: You understood the problem.
• Implication: You told customers about the impact of the problem.
• Need: You also developed a need. (Why you need the machine in your organisation?)

This is the SPIN model. The consultant designs the questions around it.

4: Benefits of Consultative Selling

Consultative selling proves very beneficial if you are able to design good questions using SPIN model. It proves beneficial in these things:

• Revenue
• Sales
• Targets

As you will adopt consultative selling approach and you will deal with customers, you will get the following benefits:

1. Respect: The first thing you will feel in consultative selling approach is being respected. A consultant in consultative selling approach talks to a customer about his/her problem. Customers know that the person talking to him/her is interested in understanding their problems. He/she will provide the solution after knowing the problem.

2. Effective product positing: Your product gets an effective positioning by adopting consultative selling approach. As you listen to your customer, you try to understand about them. Your customer tells you all about his/her problem. You will position and tell them about the product at the point you feel that you have a solution to the customer’s problem.

Now, it becomes more relevant and effective because customers will listen to what you say.

Now, the customer is getting the solution that is an outcome of his/her problem.

The solution you will provide to customers will rectify or resolve his/her problem.

3. Possibility of 10X conversion: It increases 10X conversion possibility to a greater extent. It is possible because the customer associates with you for the long-term. It is not necessary that customer purchases product immediately, he/she can be a future customer. Based on the profiling you did today, you can pitch customers in the future with the new product that is the solution to customer’s problems. Customers will also consider you at that time because you already developed a relationship with them through conversations done in past.

4. Reliable source for customer: Customer always trusts you as a reliable source when you keep a consultative selling approach with customers. The customer builds up a trust that the solution you will provide him/her is the exact solution to solve the customer’s problem.

5. Upselling and cross-selling:

For example:

• You are approaching a customer for a sales process.
• You are doing consultative selling approach and talking as a consultant.
• You did proper profiling of the customer and you have only one product to sell him/her.
• You came to know that the customer might have more requirements as a customer has broader requirements for purchasing.
• You noted the problem and did the profiling of the customer.
• You will approach the customer in the future if you have a more expensive and solution-oriented product and you will tell customers that your problem has one more solution.

The customer you approached earlier will be the first to buy that solution because he knows that you are giving the solution as per the problem he/she told you.

This increases your scope of upselling and cross-selling.

Golden Statement:

A repeat customer is always a good customer.

A fresh acquisition may take a lot of time. A customer is a repeat customer if he/she is coming to you again and again. The repeat

customer will give you increased revenue.

Note Down:

• Use consultative selling approach to sell products to find the right prospects.
• Design questions for customers using SPIN model.
• Make problem-based questions to know the problems of the customers.

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