This is somewhat different from the original consultative selling, as coined in the early 1970s by mack hananin a book well worth reading. There is a lot of wisdom and experience packaged in this book, as well as a very. In a transactional sale, value lies within the product and price becomes the primary selection criteria. Imagine for a moment that you have come down with the flu. Product selling compared to consultative selling sales. Solution selling is the most comprehensive sales and sales management process available today. Jun 03, 2010 consultative selling for professional services book launch duration. But, to offer the best solution, the salesperson must first develop an understanding of the customers business, industry, and needs. The original solution selling rewrote the rules for the sales profession. Whats the difference between consulting and consultative.
Selling the way your customer wants to buynot the way you like to sellis what you will discover in this breakthrough book. Why should you practice consultative selling instead of productbased selling. Why you should use the solution selling process lucidchart. Being able to hold a conversation around benefits and value isnt that easy but it can be mastered with practice and guidance. The solutionselling methodology isnt just for the sales team. Advantages of consultative selling over traditional. Apr 14, 20 explaining the solution selling to insight selling gap. The second half of this book was almost completely useless for me, serving as a set of testimonials about how good the solutions selling system is in b2b sales with large clients. Five reasons why consultative selling outperforms the challenger. The term consultative selling can get thrown around a lot. Solution selling has a salesperson or sales team use a sales process that is a problemled rather than productled approach to determine if and how a change in a product could bring specific improvements that are desired by the customer. The term is associated with the sales of products and services that can be used as the building blocks of a custom implementation. Consultative versus transactional b2b selling lead forensics. Sometimes this is also referred to as solutionbased selling.
This very practical approach worked and this is where i made my living for more than a decade. Xyz stands for the type of solution your client is looking for. For some sellers, thats meant moving away from solution selling to a more. It has less to do with what the customer is buying and more to do with why.
As such, any silos or archaic compensation strategies that impede solution selling. Whereas transactional selling is about the product, consultative selling is about value. Consultative selling vs transactional selling read more. Instead of taking a conventional solutionsales approach, he used an insight selling strategy, revealing to the customer needs it didnt know it had. So what are the salespeople who fail to generate value doing so wrong. Consultative selling vs solution selling salesstar. The solution selling matrix is a perfect tool to define an initial solution for. Consultative selling for professional services book. Lessons learned from consultative selling book mohamed. Historically, solutionbased selling was the expected methodology for achieving goals.
The longawaited sequel to solution selling, one of historys most popular selling guides. Besides yourself, who else is impacted by this pain and how. Pipeliner crm solution selling requires an efficient crm, through which can be visibly and easily tracked prospect issues, proposed solutions including exactly which products and services, thoughts on solutions from different decisionmakers, and tasks and activities all the way along the line. Bosworth author two books on the topic of creating buyers in difficult selling markets. Overview 15 quick solution selling tips to close more sales be sure to download marcs incredible e book on 25 tips to crush your sales goal. The interaction becomes more of a relationship than a transaction. We adopt a new approach, perhaps calling it solutions, consultative. The salesperson, in turn, uses that information to select the best possible. But perhaps the best example of solution selling is the book itself it solutionsells the concept of solution selling, from catching our attention, demonstrating that a problem exists, asking us questions, and finally prescribing a solution.
Sometimes this is also referred to as solution based selling. Jan 29, 2012 consultative selling is a more complex, longterm process involving collaboration of both buyer and seller, in which the latter must first develop an understanding of the customers business. These 9 essential books will help you to build a foundation upon which to build a successful career in businesstobusiness sales. Consultative selling is far more difficult than transactional selling. It will certainly ease you to see guide consultative selling vs solution as you such as. A must read for anyone in sales or business in general. If you are a new b2b salesperson, this list is a curriculum. Consultative selling by mack hanan macks recipe works as promised. Consultative selling made its appearance in the 1970s and, since then, has gained popularity in just about every industry and service. Solution selling is the process of selling the customer a solution to their problems as opposed to a product or service.
A salesperson who practices consultative selling develops a holistic and nuanced understanding of the buyers needs, and then they try to fulfill those needs with a customized solution. Diagnosing buyer pain parts of this post adapted from the solution selling fieldbook 2005, mcgrawhill, isbn 9780071456074 by eades, touchstone and sullivan. To bring clarity to that question, we will take a step back and compare consultative sales with a more traditional type of selling and in this exercise we will call that product selling. Increased competition and customers greater access to information and sophistication shifted the focus of a sales call from the seller to the buyer. Integrity selling selling solutions and training for. Solution selling is the best methodology ive seen for placing emphasis on business issues rather than product. What do you see as the difference between consultative. That is, how does your product or service impact the customers productivity, profitability, operating costs and downtime. Solution selling is a type and style of sales and selling methodology.
The powerful and proven solution sellingr process, updated for todays highspeed, higherpressure sales challenges. Nov 20, 2018 the term consultative selling first appeared in the 1970s book consultative selling by mack hanan. Creating buyers in difficult selling markets, was brilliant, and full of great. Jul 11, 2018 while oldschool selling tells us to focus on the features and benefits of our products, solution selling tells us to focus on the value of our solution. The hanan formula for highmargin sales at high levels, 7th edition by mack hanan is mainly targeting sales representatives to provide a specific and consistently successful approach and techniques for better sales i read the book and i found that it very helpful and useful for sales representatives. A prospect has very little time and not a great deal of bandwidth to receive your informationhence a crm solution needs to fully empower a salesperson to be able to deal with a prospect rapidly, accurately and powerfully.
Consultative selling is a more complex, longterm process involving collaboration of both buyer and seller, in which the latter must first develop an understanding of the customers business. These statistics are a reality with many factors that come into play. Solution selling, consultative selling, challenger selling is all about uncovering needs so you can position your solution. Solution selling is an excellent vehicle to teach new salespeople critical sales skills and allow experienced salespeople to fine tune their skills. Product versus solution selling business 2 community. Solution selling is a process to take the guesswork out of difficulttosell, intangible products and services. Approximately 20% of small businesses fail in their first year, and 50% of small businesses fail in their fifth year. The solution selling methodology has evolved as key components of professional selling evolve. The conventional solutionselling wisdom was that the sales teams were trained to align the customers needs to their existing solutions, and then demonstrate why it was better than the competitions solution. Rackhams follow up is in some ways more important than spin selling. Praise for previous editions of consultative selling.
Mike bosworth is probably the smartest guy i ever met in the sales training world. This book is more about the strategies and tactics of winning major accounts. Proposing a solution in a consultative way demands for a throughout understanding of the pains behind the identified needs. You cant properly offer a solution until an issue has been identified. The new solution selling expands the classic texts. If a product or service resolved the pain, you were then the true solution. Solution selling is common in areas such as construction services, software and outsourcing sales.
After reading this book, salespeople and sales managers will be able to use a welltested model that guides them through the process of selling. The hanan formula for highmargin sales at high levels, 7th edition by mack hanan is mainly targeting sales representatives to provide a specific and consistently successful approach and techniques for better sales. Any salesperson who hears price as an objection is selling transactionally. While oldschool selling tells us to focus on the features and benefits of our products, solution selling tells us to focus on the value of our solution. The term solution infers that the proposed new product produces improved outcomes. If you have worked in businesstobusiness sales for some time and havent read these books, you will discoveror be reminded ofsome ideas that will make you even more effective. Today it is almost impossible to meet a product salesperson in the businesstobusiness sector. Whether you are a new or experienced seller, this book is a must read. Consultative selling is a philosophy rooted in building a relationship between you and your prospects. On the one hand solution selling kind of implies selling a canned solution in search of problems that need it, and consultative selling implies a more custom productservice sell. Nearly 10 years ago, the influential bestseller solution selling literally rewrote the rules for selling bigticket, longcycle products.
Why does consultative or solution selling no longer work. On the other end of the selling spectrum is consultative selling. Oct 29, 2007 mike bosworth is probably the smartest guy i ever met in the sales training world. How to build a tailored solution for your prospects. If you want to change your sales force into a consultative selling machine, then you must invest heavily in the right training. And management often ignorant of the subtle differences between selling products or services and selling solutions become frustrated when. Solution selling has a salesperson or sales team use a sales process that is a. Sales why consultative selling doesnt work forget becoming a trusted adviser. However, solution selling in the promotional products industry has also been refined into value proposition selling. The new solution selling expands the classic texts cases. Consultative selling is about working with the client to identify their business needs. The sections on your dream clients needs at each stage of the buying process alone make it work it worth reading. Product versus solution selling partners in excellence. Everyone sells solutions hoping they can charge a premium or perform some miracle that will instantly differentiate them from their competitors.
It explores a selling technique in which the salesperson acts as an expert consultant for his or her prospects, asking questions to determine what the prospect needs. Jan 01, 2018 lessons learned from consultative selling book january 1, 2018 november 10, 2018 mohamed sami the consultative selling. They will head online to research their problems and find possible solutions, long before ever contacting any potential suppliers. Over the past few decades, solution selling hasbecome more broadly defined to include dimensions of. The b2b selling landscape is transforming and nowhere can this be seen more clearly than in the rise in popularity of consultative selling. It really has nothing to do with helping the customer. The salesperson, in turn, uses that information to select the best possible product or service to meet a need. Productfocused selling the transition from productfocused selling to needfocused selling was the direct result of market changes. Mar 26, 20 sales why consultative selling doesnt work forget becoming a trusted adviser. The consultative sales process is most especially not about you. So, a very strong recommendation if you need to learn, or teach, sales to other.
Lessons learned from consultative selling book mohamed sami. Eades is a required reading for the enfusen sales staff, and a mustread for anyone in the. In a consultative sale, the salesperson creates value. Spin selling explains the science behind consultative selling, or rather, presenting an offer to a potential client, based systematically on the clients painpoints, using a powerful questioning process. The new solution selling shows how to apply the proven solution selling approach in the cantstoptotalk pace of todays business. Today, the revolutionary yet practical solution selling method remains the primary selling process for salespeople competing in every industry around the world, and in every size of businessfrom the. Key differences between consultative selling vs traditional transactional selling a consultative sale is different from a traditional sale in that it involves suggesting a tailored solution to the customers problem after listening to their needs, rather than the sole purpose being to sell a specific product that may not meet their unique needs. Solution selling refers to the philosophy or practice of uncovering a customers pain points and then providing products and services that address the underlying business problem. The solution selling matrix is a perfect tool to define an initial solution for addressing the pains of a prospect moving into system integration what is causing you to have this pain. Consultative selling vs transactional selling john. Overview 15 quick solution selling tips to close more sales be sure to download marcs incredible ebook on 25 tips to crush your sales goal. The 7 stages of the solution selling process simplicable.
Selling consultatively resembles consulting in some regards, but ends with presenting a single brand as the best solution. Solution selling is the end result of a proper consultation. If you arent positioning your organization as a consultative, solution selling resource you are falling behind because, rest assured, your competition is. For a start, the vast majority continue to use a consultative selling or. Consultative selling for professional services book launch duration. Rather than just promoting an existing product, the salesperson focuses on the customers pains and addresses the issue with his or her offerings. One of the most intuitive books on the market for selling. Why should you practice consultative selling instead of. Pipeliner crm empowers snap selling pipeliner crm is designed very much along the same sorts of principles as snap selling. Consultative selling vs solution consultative selling vs solution when people should go to the books stores, search instigation by shop, shelf by shelf, it is truly problematic. This is why we allow the books compilations in this website.
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