Crying cockles and mussels alive, alive, oh

To some people sales and selling can be dirty words, inspiring images of real estate agents and car salesman using unscrupulous tactics, pressure and feelings of loss. But selling is the foundation of commerce and we all earn money that had been generated through sales at some point.

On an abstract level, selling is obtaining an agreement to do something for someone in exchange for payment, and there are different sales strategies used for the sale of different things.

Imagine a horizontal line of sales strategies all lined up next to one another. The kind of strategy employed by a second hand car salesman will be on the left hand side; this strategy is all about emotion. The salesman will try to engage a prospective customer emotionally with the car sales process, and once emotionally invested it becomes harder for the customer to say no to the sale.

This kind of emotional sales strategy can leave customers with an icky feeling of being had, and does not encourage repeat business.

On the opposite end of the line of sales strategies are those used by corporate consultants, it is called solutions based selling, consultative sales or business development. This process adhered to ethically, uses no emotion and creates win-win business relationships that can last for decades and represent millions of dollars of revenue and the priceless prosperity of good will.

The process of solution selling is very simple and involves three general stages

Strong foundations

At the core of a sale is a promise to give something, goods or service, in exchange for money and if your potential customer does not trust you to do what you say you will, there will be no sale. Building the foundations for a sale is first about establishing capability, to demonstrate you are capable of doing what you say you are going to do and then about building trust.

Establishing capability is as easy as discussing how you have helped other organisations in the past, and building trust could be just openly discussing issues you have experienced with other clients, what the problems were and how they were resolved. You are trying to form long term relationships with people, and the quickest way to find out how good a supplier is when something goes wrong.

Be honest, be open, adhere to your personal values and most of all listen to your client, because the only way you can figure out what they need is by hearing and understanding their problems.

Finding and exploring the gap

Once you have a client who trusts you they will begin to open up a little about their business, and talk about things that are difficult or are causing problems. Next time you are in a meeting with a consultant listen for questions like “So what are your greatest challenges?” and “What sort of problems do you encounter”. These questions are designed to identify areas of your organisation that are causing problems or explore opportunities for improvement or efficiencies.

Once you have identified the problem area, you need to find out why it is a problem, imagine it like feeling out a tiny cave you can’t see inside with your hand and then drawing the shape of the inside of the cave from touch alone. This exploration of issues is the most important step as you need to undeerstand the problem to fix it.

Bridging the gap

Bridging the gap is about filling the need or the cave you have identified in the finding and exploring the gap phase earlier and once you have a full and detailed picture of the client’s issue you can now use your special consultant powers to conjure up a solution. This is usually pretty easy as nothing helps to tackle a problem like perspective and as an external agency you have an outside in view of your client’s business.

Once the solution has been detailed in a proposal the client can look at their problem, understand your solution and decide whether it is worth the cost you have indicated. If you have done the finding, exploring and bridging process properly the deal itself should fall into place.

Emotion in the mix

Some people will still use an emotional component in the consultative sales process that I find personally a little underhand; but it is taught in some texts by some highly respected operators so I will add it here for completeness.

Between the finding and exploring the gap and the bridging the gap phase you can wedge the problem wider, at least in the minds of the perspective clients by using emotion. This is done by asking negative questions like “What would happen if you don’t fix this problem” or “Are you worried your competitors are already adopting this technology” or “What would your manager say if this system broke”.

These reverse negative questions turn the problem inside out and increase the percentage of sales by increasing the visibility by the client of the issue you have identified and that you are going to propose a solution for.