Deep Empathy and Active Listening
Consultative selling adds a customer-centric flavor to selling. This includes hearing customers and giving them the time to open up to you. I
According to Sanjeevv Somanath, Founder, The Sales Yogi, "Though spoken about a lot, listening in sales is underutilized. Ask the right questions, listen to the answers, and reconfirm what you understood at the end. This starts the process of letting the client know you are there to help."
Hone Your Interpersonal Skills
Interpersonal skills include the ability to communicate effectively with prospects. To get more detailed answers from prospective customers, ask open-ended questions such as:
- Why isn't your current process working for you?
- What's preventing you from achieving your targets?
- What are your key differentiators?
Confirm What You Hear
When you are talking to multiple prospects, there is room for miscommunication. According to Laura Janusik, Founder, Listening to Change, "The skill of confirming is critical—just paraphrasing and asking if you're right is so important to build trust. It's the #1 skill that develops trust for even physicians."
Empathize With Your Prospect
Consultative selling involves letting the prospect know that you are human too. Rather than traditional sales, the salesperson takes extra effort to understand the pain points and addresses the issue with their offerings. This requires a certain level of empathy and humanness from the salespeople
Ooze Confidence in Every Conversation
Prospects look up to your people as domain experts. And experts do not falter. Even if salespeople do not know the answer to their problems, they should appear confident and know what to say when the situation demands it to build that bond with the prospect.
Be Curious
The aim is to find the prospect's sales challenges. For this, sales reps should ask questions in real time, follow industry trends, research the prospect, understand product capabilities, and offer insights. Sales reps should have that drive to know more, always ask more questions and look for nonverbal cues.
Develop Patience for the Consultative Approach
It takes time to build trust with prospects, so salespeople should patiently answer queries, research the prospect, share examples and case studies, and finally be ready to customize the product to suit the prospect. Rushing through a sale is a big NO if you are following the consultative approach.