I was talking to a colleague about the lost opportunity sellers have in helping customers focus on their business problems and challenges. Most of what we call selling forces the customer to do all the heavy lifting of recognizing there is an opportunity to change, identifying problems, understanding it, learning about it, engaging other in thinking about the issues and things they might do in addressing those problems by changing and leveraging solutions.
Sellers tend to get engaged at the very end, when they have done all that and are looking to solutions or considering alternative products to help them address the issues. By this time, all the hard work has been done.
We’ve been working with teams to intervene much earlier and very differently. This early intervention focuses on helping customer understand, characterize, and learn about the issues. It helps them commit to a change, to establish goals for that change, and to develop the plan for executing the process, identifying solutions, and implementing the changes.
In focusing on the customer business problems, not on the solutions, these sellers help build the customer understanding, and confidence. In that process, they build engagement, and trust. At some point, the customers say, “How can you help us….”
We’ve benchmarked skyrocketing win rates, less FOMU, and buying/selling cycles that are 30% shorter than the traditional ways we sell to those customers.
As I described this process to the colleague, she said, “I get it, but isn’t that what consultants do, aren’t we going to struggle in competing with consultants?”
It’s a great question, I had to reflect on this for a couple of days. And my thinking is, “Yes, but there is another way to look at this….”
First consultants earn billions by helping customers think differently about their businesses. Helping them recognize the need to change, helping them manage and commit to the change process. Consultants help customers recognize problems the customer had never identified. And they help them look at an implement solutions.
So in some way, consultants provide great capability in helping customers initiate and manage their buying process.
But sellers have the opportunity to do the same thing, perhaps much better and at a greater depth than consultants. When you think about it, sellers in an organization work with 100’s and 1000’s of customers in identifying and addressing problems. The collective understanding and experience sellers have in addressing problems may be much greater than that of consultants.
What our customers struggle with is expertise and experience in addressing specific problem or challenges. They need help and guidance.
It’s these problems or challenges we see and work with everyday. We have great experience in how others address these, where they have succeeded or failed. how they successfully manage the process through making decisions and implementation.
In some areas, we may have deeper experience than consultants, because we have the responsibility of supporting our customers through the implementation, use, and expansion of the solution in their organizations. We want to retain and grow those customers through a great experience with through our work and their implementation of a solution.
Consultants and sellers, sometimes, have overlapping roles. We shouldn’t shy away from leveraging our experience and expertise in working with our customers. Customers need help, they will reach out and value those who are helpful.
Afterword: If you look at the picture and the things consultants do, great sellers deliver the same capabilities to their clients.
Vic Romita says
David,
Consultants are often placed in the position to prove how smart they are to justify the $500/hour price tag for an engagement. Sellers are in the position to help clients prove how smart the clients are, if they engage early enough, to justify a $500,000,000 effort to improve business outcomes. Both are consultative and collaborative but may have different business objectives. Is this an over simplification? Of course…and I apologize if I have offended any consultants.
Regards,
Vic
David Brock says
Vic, first, it’s great to see you commenting. While a bit cynical (and we are both in the consulting business), I think you are onto something. I do think the end goal of consultants and and sellers may diverge. Some consultants will provide deep analysis and recommendations. However there are a lot of consultants that are interested in supporting a customer in a change implementation, realizing the results they expected.
While many consultants want to focus on proving how smart they are, there are too many sellers focused on proving how great their products are. Neither is very helpful to customers. I do tend to believe that sellers, while more narrow in their focus are probably much deeper in their understanding of how to help customers achieve success. And I think the cumulative experience they bring in that narrow focus is far deeper than the majority of consultants. How many consultants can claim their firms have the experience in working with 1000s of customers on solving a very specific set of problems?
Such an interesting observation. Thanks so much, Vic!