Tweet

Consultative Selling Addresses the Need Buyers Never Admit

Written by: Paul Johnson

Article Overview: Your prospects will be eager to buy when you proactively address the hidden need identified in this Consultative Selling article. Ignoring this need will cost you sales.

Consultative Selling Addresses the Need Buyers Never Admit

© 2007 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

The nature of your buyer's need is a factor that can make it easy to determine if Consultative Selling is the right approach for your sales team to take. Prospects will tell you they need many things ranging from fuzzy terms like wealth and happiness to specific conditions like color and size. However, one need they never verbalize is the need to avoid high costs of failure.

Each purchase we make carries the potential cost of failure; that cost is measured by all the bad things that can happen if the purchase we make doesn't do all the things we bought it to do. Cost of failure has three measurable components: Money, Time, and Success.

For instance, if we try a new candy bar and decide we don't like it after the first bite, we can afford to throw it away because we're only out a dollar. This simple candy bar example really only affects us along the Money dimension. Loss of Time and Success is insignificant, because our next step can be to immediately buy a sure thing -- our favorite candy bar -- and resume a successful candy eating experience.

Consultative Selling is more applicable when costs of failure along all three dimensions is high, especially success. I can redo a candy bar, but I can't redo my life. If I'm weighing treatment alternatives for a serious illness, I more fully appreciate a consultant who can help me make that decision, especially when one of the costs of failure may be death.

In a business setting, the person responsible for making the purchase decision relative to an important project can fear all three cost facets of failure. After spending a lot of MONEY and investing six months of TIME for implementation, as well as all the labor hours consumed during training and adoption, failure of the project to SUCCEED in delivering the desired results may end up costing the individual their job. While your buyer may never verbalize these concerns, you can bet they're on their mind.

Consultative Selling actively works to reduce risks associated with potential loss of Money, loss of Time, and loss of Success. When your buyer is facing high cost of failure, Consultative Selling is usually the right sales approach for you to adopt.

Related Articles
  Stepping Beyond Consultative Sales
  Consultative Selling Fills an Important Gap for Buyers
  Consultative Selling
  Consultative Selling Solves the Puzzle Your Product Can't
  How Does Someone Actually Do Consultative Selling?

Article Tags: candy bar, Consultative Selling, Consultative Selling, failure, favorite candy bar



Related Forum Posts
Hyphen versus Full Stop - Hi There, It is astounding, as to how much variety can be used to create Domain Addresses. What about using a full stop or more commonly used as 'stop'? (.) It is easy to communicate. Interested to hear your views. Beat "Unlocking People's Potentials!"
Re: Are You Complying with the FTC? - A lot online marketers will run to Cyprus and other Islands to do their businesses. FTC rule or no rule the Internet is a global thing and still a wild wild west. Buyers should be careful and do due diligent before buying anything online
Re: Kevin's Case Study #10 - When to become an entrepreneur? - When the bug bite you. A lot of successful entrepreneurs started in their teens or at school. Selling sweets to fellow students or lemonade to firends in the neighbourhood.
Re: This is Marketing Warfare! - Hey GT, I guess this was from a while back, and it'll test your memory a bit but could you possibly elaborate on Unique Selling Proposition? Can you give us some examples of good USPs?
Blog pinging - Thanks Martin - yes, I do ping and it has been very effective. I'm currently on the first page of Google for Mastermind Group and on the second page for Selling to Small Business.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Selling On Ebay The Good The Bad And The Ugly

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Log On

How To Improve Your CTA (Call To Action)

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.