Blog

The art of selling has constantly been adapting, and with the consultative selling process being on the rise, sales training courses have been scrambling to adapt and stay on top of the times. At High Performance Sales, we offer a variety of classes and consulting programs to help our students master the art of consultative selling. 

In this blog, we briefly discuss one of the biggest obstacles that salespeople face — assumptions. When a salesperson tries to offer a solution before fully understanding what their client wants and needs, this can be a recipe for failure. People want to feel heard. It is just how we are all wired! We have already discussed the skill of active listening in some of our prior blogs. When salespeople neglect to leave room for this, assumptions can quickly creep in, and the sales process can feel rushed for both you and the client. It is important to always understand what the client needs before presenting a solution. 

Learning Your Client’s Business 

Taking the time to learn your potential client’s business is critical. The interest you show in their product or service, and the overall understanding that you have of it can be the greatest factor in determining where the sales conversation leads. 

Here are some general questions that can guide you in learning about a business if you feel like you have no idea of where to start. 

• What problem does the business solve?
• What is the target market for your business?
• How does the business generate income?
• Which of your services or products are most profitable?
• Are your customers likely to refer you to other customers?
• What is your timeline like for achieving the results you want?
• What are the business’s biggest pain points? 

Learning about their business is all about listening, asking the right questions, and then listening some more. This comes more naturally to some people than others. 

The online sales programs at High Performance Sales put a heavy emphasis on learning how to ask the right questions, as well as the right follow-up questions, and how to practice active listening without wasting valuable time during initial sales meetings. 

If you begin offering a solution before fully understanding the businesses’ pain points, it will be clear that you are coming at the sales meeting with a cookie-cutter approach that is not individualized to that individual client. The client will then have to reverse engineer the solution that you are providing in order to wrap their head around how it can drive revenue for their business and serve their customers. This will only cloud their mind and distract them from the unique services that you are able to offer them!

The best salespeople know how to critically think about problems and adjust their sales strategy on the fly. This can be difficult, as problems are abstract, and they pull at gaps in our understanding, which are not always to be filled without much further thought and consideration then you have time for in a sales meeting. Learning how to sell in a consultative manner takes practice, and professional training certainly doesn’t hurt!

Next Steps

If any of this sounds like material that you would be interested in studying further, the instructor at High Performance Sales, Karl Uselman, would be happy to speak with you. Karl is a professor at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, and applies his knowledge to students outside of the university setting through his online sales training classes. Visit the High Performance Sales site to learn more about the Platinum Sales Program!