Ryan Dohrn answers whether consultative and solution-based selling can work together. He says they should be combined: guide customers to what they need, not just what they want, and use success-story selling to show how others solved similar problems.
Hey friends and fans, Ryan Dohrn here, your Global Sales Coach. We're answering your listener questions sent in to ryan@ryandohrn.com. Don't forget to subscribe below and click the little bell button, and you'll be alerted every time we update one of these listener questions. All right, next question comes from Randy out in Wyoming. Randy asked this question: Ryan, I'd like to be a solution-based seller, and I'd also like to be a consultative-based seller. Can these 2 selling styles coexist? And Randy, the answer is not only do they exist, can they coexist, but they actually probably should coexist. So let's talk about it. Randy, what— and everybody, what you want to be careful of with a consultative-based sale is consultative-based sales are typically based upon customer needs assessments. The problem is that a customer needs assessment starts off fundamentally with the right approach to determine what they need. Unfortunately, very often it becomes what they want. So in the end, you're actually determining what they want instead of what they need. And as a salesperson, we have an obligation and a duty to guide people towards what it is that they actually need to do with us. Now, whether you're selling advertising or software solutions or insurance, you've got to be really careful because if you give a customer what they want and not what they need, you usually have a customer for a shorter length of time. You want to always be guiding them towards what it is that they need. Now, solutions-based selling falls right in line with consultative. That means you're determining what they need, what they want, what they desire. You're helping them come up with a solution that makes the most sense. But again, you want to guide them towards what they need to do and not just what they want to do. I believe that we have like a moral obligation as salespeople not to short-sell people. Instead, really guide people towards what it is that they actually need to do with us far beyond what they actually want to do. Now, people ask me all the time, Ryan, do you lose money doing that? And the answer is absolutely not, because I'm a success story-based seller. So I show what others have done, what somebody else needs to do to be successful. So Randy, I hope that's helpful, and I would encourage you to be a little bit of both consultative and solutions-based. Make sure you're always guiding them towards what they need to do with you, not just what they want to do with you. Friends, keep your questions coming into ryan@ryandohrn.com. Hey, love to get out there and speak at your national sales meetings and things like that. And then friends, don't forget to buy a new copy, a copy of my new book called Selling Forward. You can find that at Kindle, over at amazon.com, Audible, you name it. And don't forget, all the proceeds, the net proceeds of that go to the Golden Harvest Food Bank and Feeding America. All right, send in your questions, ryan@ryandohrn.com. And don't forget, friends, if sales was easy, everybody'd be doing it, and they're not. We're not crazy, friends. This is a career that'll feed your family for a lifetime. All right, we'll see you next week.
