“Act like a consultant”

Many of the sales experts say “Act like a consultant” – Diagnose, prescribe etc.

We’ve always thought that was a great approach, but found it difficult to apply in practice. This is because we deal primarily in a specialist area (user documentation and online Help), and it’s not something that people think about very often. They only want to speak to us when they need it. We want to, need to, speak to them before they get to that stage.

We thought about gaining knowledge about the other issues they deal with, so that we could widen the consultation discussions and make ourselves more attractive to them, but this isn’t easy. We can’t be experts in everything.

So how else can we make ourselve more useful to our prospects and clients? How else can we get to talk to them about their “big” issues?

We now talk to them about their big issues because we can connect them to people that do know about those things. We don’t have the knowledge, these people do.

We can talk about market positioning issues and connect them to a positioning expert, email marketing issues and connect them to a marketing expert, selling skills issues and connect them to a soft selling expert, sales motivation issues and connect them to the UK’s No 1 motivational speaker and coach, recruiting and supporting a sales force issues and talk to other recruitment agencies, direct mailing issues and connect them to an expert in this field, user training issues and connect them to me, conferences and connect them to other trainers or event managers, user documentation issues and connect them to Cherryleaf, outsourced selling and connect them to a flexible sales manager, finance issues and connect them to a flexible CFO, legal issues and connect them to lawyers, finance raising issues and connect them to a VC or a business angel, and so on.

It’s changed the way we talk to our prospects, and it’s certainly more fun to do.

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