The so-called “consultative” approach to selling is a death wish for direct sales organizations. Companies that flocked like sheep to this trendy needs-based problem-solving approach to sales in the blow-and-go 90′s are now discovering that client-centered selling has a dark side. Businesses that relied on sophisticated marketing schemes to drive buyers through the front door or to the web site are now forced to downsize and reorganize. This article is based on a recent research study that helps hammer more nails in the coffin of client-driven selling.
How “Client-Focus” Mutated into Client-Driven Sales
The boom of the 1990′s covered up many problems inherent in consultative-type selling. What began quite correctly as a renewed concern for customer satisfaction became a process that undermined sales productivity.
- 1. Investigating client needs and developing solutions took a great deal more time and thereby raised the cost of sales by slowing down the sales process. The problem was confounded by the need for expensive technology and increased training to support the analytical process.
- 2. Consultative sales was spawned in high tech companies who had a legitimate need for a different kind of sales process. Their client base was limited to only a few potential customers. Each sale was a huge investment. The typical sales cycle might take a year or more as multiple decision makers were consulted. Always on the lookout for something new, gurus saw a marketing opportunity and hyped what they called “strategic sales” as the panacea for all sales organizations. Many VP’s of sales wanted to believe they were engaged in something avant-garde and sexy like strategic sales. They jumped on the band wagon only to discover that direct sales is nothing like strategic selling.
- 3. Consultative-type selling attracts the wrong kind of people to direct sales. Selling and service are NOT the same thing and different kinds of people excel at each. Service-oriented people tend to be more call reluctant, preferring to let the customer take the initiative. These individuals quickly saw in consultative selling a rationale for their hesitation to prospect. What was rightly intended as a customer-focused process mutated in a client-driven sales process in which the salesperson becomes reactive rather than proactive.
- 4. As client-driven sales transformed salespeople into professional visitors, prospecting pipelines dried up. Based as it was on sales organizations with limited clientele (see #2 above), prospecting was overlooked in the consultation sale (or in some cases downright rejected as unprofessional, pushy and rude). As prospecting became more and more a lost art, companies had to rely on marketing to uncover leads which, in turn, reinforced the passive, reactive behaviors of the sales force. When funds for mass marketing appeals were scaled back, corporate order takers masquerading as salespeople were at a complete loss as to how to build new business.