Chapter 5: Conducting Specific Sales Transactions

BECOMING A CONSULTANCY SALESPERSON

The revenue of a consultancy practice depends on sales but it is a rare business that receives enough orders without any selling effort. So, one of the activities that consultants need to undertake is selling. Career advance in any profession usually involves taking on commercial responsibilities, yet many professionals recoil when contemplating selling. Few will have considered it as a career and fewer still will have previous experience of selling. The addition of consultancy to the product portfolio of other businesses (such as IT companies) in recent years, however, has meant that established sales forces have needed to sell consultancy.

It is said that the skilled salesperson can sell anything, which implies that there is a set of selling skills that are universally applicable. Whether this is true is debatable. Certainly there will be salespeople who find little difficulty in making the transition to selling consultancy from selling more tangible items. But there are several significant differences between these activities, and understanding the implications of these differences will help in selling consultancy. Likewise, the consultant who has no previous selling experience needs some guidance as to the appropriate sales processes to use in selling consultancy. There are challenges for both.

Challenges for the Experienced Salesperson

Even products that can be customized are usually broadly predefined offerings, which may be tailored in detail to the needs of the client. Much of the time, consultancy is the opposite. It starts with identifying the needs of the client (or responding to a set of needs as embodied in an invitation to tender) and then putting together an offering that helps the client to address these needs. This means that — unless you are a consultant with only one product — it is unusual to sell consultancy by going to a client with a preconception of what you are going to sell him or her. Selling is more often about spotting opportunities than creating needs. The implications for you if you are a traditional salesperson are therefore:

• Each consultancy project is a uniquely tailored offering. A car salesperson might sell from a product catalogue; the only variations are the extras that a customer might want. In consultancy, the sales process involves product definition.

• You must listen to clients' requirements and respond with offerings that reflect their needs.

• If you work for a large firm of consultants, you cannot have a comprehensive knowledge across all fields of its consultancy offerings, and so you will need to involve specialists in support selling.

The role of salesperson in consultancy is more one of facilitator than 'hero'. You have to create opportunities that others will help to realize.

Figure 5.1 shows the critical dimensions in thinking about the role of the salesperson. The figure shows two extremes; it is unlikely that any sales activity will be wholly at one end or the other, but will be somewhere in between. What the figure points out, though, is the thrust in selling consultancy; for those whose experience lies in selling products, the challenge lies in moving towards the right in the diagram. The spectrum of selling is shown from being transaction oriented to relationship oriented. A salesperson who is strongly transaction oriented will be impelled to close the sale. In an extreme form this is typical of the high-pressure salesperson, who has a prime objective to ensure that you buy.

Figure 5.1: The selling spectrum

Salespeople who want repeat business recognize early in their careers that they cannot be wholly transaction oriented. Of course, the quotas and targets that they are set are usually related to sales volume - no points for having wonderful relationships and no sales - but they will be anxious to preserve a good relationship with their customers.

Consultancy, too, has quotas and targets, but the need for a good relationship is even greater than with other products. When buying a tangible item you can see an example of what you will get; in consultancy you buy only a promise. Even if the consultancy has a proven track record, this is no guarantee of success on this occasion; it simply reduces the sense of risk. So there has to be a high level of trust between the salesperson and his or her client. But as with other successful client relationships, once they are firmly established, consultancy clients become a fruitful source of continuing business.

Challenges for the Technical Specialist

There are challenges for the technical specialist who becomes involved in selling. As for the salesperson, there will be some who make the transition very easily; others find it difficult to accept a sales role. Some specialists feel selling is 'unprofessional', and are most uncomfortable when called on to do it.

In such circumstances they may rely on their technical expertise, or the warmth of their relationships with the client to secure the sale. But as Figure 5.2 shows, there are three factors that combine to influence the selling performance of a professional:

• Technical skills. The specialist skills of the consultant.

• Interpersonal skills. In the short term, these are the skills of conducting effective personal relationships. In the longer term, these are manifest as the consultant's network, which needs to be established, maintained and developed.

• Selling skills. Understanding buying and selling processes in consultancy, and capability in identifying opportunities and developing sales.

Figure 5.2: Factors influencing selling performance

All three are important. The area of the triangle in Figure 5.2 depends on the length of all three sides, so if the length of one side is nil, then the area will be nil. If the area of the triangle represents sales performance, all three skills must be represented to achieve a satisfactory standard of sales performance. What consultants and other professionals often feel reluctant to admit is that selling skills are important. The figure shows, however, that selling skills are as important as the other two.