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STEPHANIE WOODS

With consultative selling, you dig deep to learn what’s critically important to the customer. Then you create a solution that provides more value than the intrinsic worth of your product or service. Creating this kind of value is particularly important if you’re competing against another company that may come in with a lower price.

But how do you learn what’s critically important to the customer? How can you create customer value? How do you even begin?

Getting Started

Value creation starts even before the sales process begins. You create a well-researched prospect list of companies that most likely have problems your company can solve. Think about the issues that prompted existing customers to buy your company’s product or service. Look for businesses in similar situations.

You want to learn as much as you can about each prospect company. Its Web site often is the best source. Financial analysts’ reports can provide useful information, too. Find someone there who’s knowledgeable about the problems the company is facing and which your product or service can address. You aren’t selling anything at this point. You’re engaging in a conversation that gives you valuable information. Learn in particular who at the company owns the problem being discussed.

Meet with the problem owner to get a solid understanding of the issue and especially its implications. For example, increased foreign competition is making it necessary for the company to cut production costs. The implications of this problem can include poorer quality, lower customer satisfaction, returned merchandise, increased calls to the help desk, etc.

Ask the problem’s owner questions that will give you the information you need. Listen closely to what’s being said. Don’t trot out your solution until you fully understand the situation. The chief reason why sales efforts fail is the seller offers a solution prematurely. The customer feels the salesperson is glib, interested only in the sale rather than meeting the customer’s needs and, worse yet, not to be trusted.

Once the problem’s owner understands the value of what you’re offering, you’ll have an ally in the effort to sell the senior executives who can provide the budget for the purchase.

How to Get Those Appointments

 Our workshop participants often tell us they find it difficult to get the appointments they must generate. What’s needed, we tell them, is strong messaging that asks for the appointment. The request for an appointment can be delivered live on the phone (if you’re lucky enough to catch the prospect in the office), via a phone message or via an e-mail message.

Whatever medium you use, the message has to meet five criteria: The message is short, provocative, shows insight about the prospect’s business, promises value, and credentials you and your company. It’s useful to practice the message before you use it.

The Questions You’ll Ask

Huthwaite advises participants in its workshops to use the four types of SPIN® Selling questions to uncover and develop customer needs and then offer a unique winning solution. SPIN stands for:

Situation questions that help you uncover background information. Problem questions that uncover customer’s difficulties, dissatisfactions and disppointments. Implication questions that help the customer understand the ramifications of those problems or needs. Need-Payoff questions that help the prospect define how the solution can help or be useful to their situation.

Creating Value

Nobody questions the importance of creating value. After all, it’s a good way to focus the customer’s attention away from price and to fend off a lower-priced competitor. But how can you create value?

There are four value creation methods: The first is to identify an unforeseen opportunity. The second is to point out a problem the customer wouldn’t have recognized without your help. The third is to find a solution the customer didn’t think of. The fourth is to leverage the resources your company can provide to give your offering added appeal. For example, your IT people can create a system that makes your product easier to order and inventory.

What You Don’t Need

I need better skills at overcoming objections, participants in Huthwaite’s workshops often tell us. You don’t need skills in overcoming objections, we reply. What you do need is a way to work with the customer so you can cooperate in developing a “no surprises” solution that doesn’t result in objections. The SPIN Selling questions will help you do that.

Our workshop participants ask additional questions: How can we actively differentiate our offerings from those of our competitors? How can we get our customers to see their needs as serious enough to require action? How can we make a sale when a buyer puts a premium on something we don’t do well? What should we do when a hot prospect gets cold feet for no good reason?

These questions and others are answered in the FAQs on Huthwaite’s website. Together with the white papers on the site, they offer valuable information on how to become more successful at making consultative sales.

Stephanie Woods is Vice President-Sales Operations for Huthwaite, a sales performance improvement company. Best known as the creator of SPIN® Selling, the company publishes free e-newsletters available with a range of other resource materials at its Web site, www.huthwaite.com.