“Business is always personal,” Michael Scott once said. “It’s the most personal thing in the world.”
In the fictional realm of The Office, Scott is a goofy, seemingly unproductive boss. But he has a knack for getting to know his customers — he keeps a rolodex with notecards for clients and friends. And it pays off when it comes time to close a deal.
You might remember the infamous Chili’s scene. No, not the Dundies presentation. The one with the awesome blossom onion, extra awesome.
Scott defies his boss Jan’s attempts to dive into the sale and instead gets to know the customer first. They make conversation, joke and come up with a song about Chili’s baby back ribs. He closes with the sales pitch. And in the end, that people-first approach cinches the deal and saves Dunder Mifflin.
That episode aired in 2005, when Scott was a bit ahead of the curve. He dismantled the idea of a pushy salesperson and instead showcased how using a consultative approach and building trust with clients can lead to better, long-lasting sales relationships where clients feel understood and that their needs are met.
Now, Scott’s people-first approach is taking hold in real offices. And it’s important: Insights from consulting firm The Brevet Group show just 13 percent of customers believe a salesperson can understand their needs — and therefore meet them with solutions.
At Flexport, Landis, Ogury, Paddle and Mesh, consultative sales is the status quo. Built In NYC sat down with salespeople at all five companies to find out how they channel their inner Michael Scott and use a consultative approach to build trust with their own clients.
Flexport is building a strategic operation model that combines tech, analytics, logistics infrastructure and supply chain expertise to make global trade easier.
Have you always had a consultative approach to sales, or is this a relatively new shift for you?
I started my career in consulting, so taking a consultative approach to sales has always been natural to me. Consulting taught me to ask strategic questions, lead conversations with a plan and build momentum toward decisions. When you put your client’s challenges, priorities and concerns before your own, you act as a trusted advisor. This approach affords me the freedom to give options or ideas in a non-confrontational way.
When you put your client’s challenges, priorities and concerns before your own, you act as a trusted advisor.”
How do revenue results and client relationships change when salespeople take a consultative approach to their work?
Clients appreciate partners that act as an extension of their team. That looks like proactively communicating updates and sharing solutions to help clients improve their business. By knowing what the client’s department and team goals are, I have the clarity to hand select the products and services that I know will make a material impact on their business.
What would you say to a person or team that is resistant to the idea of shifting to a more consultative approach?
One of my early mentors Bill Mcdermott told me that leaders put the interests of others first, and I think this is the core tenet of consultative selling. Shifting to a consultative mindset increases my awareness and exposes blindspots I may have had about the opportunity by framing the situation from my client’s perspective. I’ve found that taking a consultative approach fosters a long-standing relationship, not just a single transaction.
Ogury offers a future-proof end-to-end AdTech solution that achieves the highest performance on the market while respecting user privacy.
Have you always had a consultative approach to sales, or is this a relatively new shift for you?
I have always taken a consultative sales approach in order to have the most effective outcomes for my clients. Using this approach allows me to achieve a deeper understanding of how to best serve a client from both a product and platform perspective and with customer service. Each client has a unique marketing objective, key performance indicator measurement, etc., so being consultative and transparent allows me to set up the most efficient and effective business approach tailored to their needs.
How do revenue results and client relationships change when salespeople take a consultative approach to their work?
Taking a consultative approach allows clients to be more open about how the seller can be the most effective partner for them. When clients are more open about their needs and aspirations for their brand, it allows a seller to better position the product and leverage consultative knowledge to help solve their challenges. There have been moments when the timing was not ideal for a client but they recognized the consultative and transparent approach, and it led to a deal in the future.
What would you say to a person or team that is resistant to the idea of shifting to a more consultative approach?
A consultative approach may seem daunting on the front end, but this method really fixates on serving a client’s specific needs as opposed to taking a cookie-cutter approach that may not be best suited for them. The foundation of a successful campaign relies on the individual strengths of that brand or product and highlighting those strengths. This can only be effectively carried out through a consultative approach.
At Landis, clients choose their dream home, rent it and then purchase it back from Landis — all while improving their credit scores and building down payments with Landis’s tools.
Have you always had a consultative approach to sales, or is this a relatively new shift for you?
When I first started my sales career as an individual contributor, I sold a product and then moved on. For a revenue organization, that approach is a nightmare. You get a very quick win, but there is a high likelihood that the client will be unhappy, and there is a very low probability of retention. This leads to a high number of troubleshooting hours with customer support and a revenue model that is hard to predict.
As I transformed my career in different SaaS-based sales roles, including cybersecurity, it was clear the only way to create easy and predictable revenue is through a consultative approach. Salespeople should always teach clients about specific solutions. But they first need to make the client aware of the problem those solutions solve.
As an organization of business-to-business-to-consumer sellers — Landis sells to real estate agents who then offer our solution to their clients — the importance of consultation is clear. In most cases, we do not talk directly to the client, so we need to uncover the challenges agents face and then teach them about how our solution is the right fit. In the end, we are more inquisitive teachers than salespeople.
The only way to create easy and predictable revenue is through a consultative approach.’’
How do revenue results and client relationships change when salespeople take a consultative approach to their work?
In a previous cybersecurity role, I was in charge of developing a first-to-market product strategy and sales pitch. We knew there was a clear problem to solve for our target market, although our prospects were not thinking about this problem yet. When we first went to market, we told prospects about the huge vulnerability they were risking. The numbers were astonishing. We were selling them on value to a problem they did not yet agree that they had, and this approach was widely unsuccessful.
If you run marathons and go to a doctor, what would be a more effective approach: If the doctor said, “most people suffer knee problems,” or “men in their 30s who run marathons have a 90 percent chance of having knee problems?” The latter: The doctor learned about you and then shared specific, relevant data. It is the same thing in sales.
This is why our initial launch was a great learning experience. We were not asking the right questions up front, and we were not educating the client on the specific problems they faced. The pivot to a consultative approach led us to quickly win our first 10 clients, and it accelerated our growth for the years ahead.
What would you say to a person or team that is resistant to the idea of shifting to a more consultative approach?
I would ask a salesperson what they want to achieve in their career. If you want to live month by month to achieve a sales goal, you might have a chance to do that with your current approach. If you want to build a career that develops trusted relationships and value for your clients, it is time to adjust.
After each pitch or sale, ask yourself: What is the client’s pain point? How did I propose solving this problem? If you cannot answer the first question, you will never get to the second. If you can get to the second, did you offer them a short-term fix or a long-term solution? If you offer a long-term solution, you are on your way to a long-lasting and successful career in sales.
Our sales team is doing just that. We help agents identify which clients are the right fit, who they were unable to work with previously, and, in addition, share solutions on how to grow their business with Landis.
Paddle is a fintech company that offers SaaS companies a single platform to manage payment infrastructure.
Have you always had a consultative approach to sales, or is this a relatively new shift for you?
I fortunately had mentors early in my career who provided guidance and training for how and why to take a consultative approach to sales. They taught me that the goal of selling is different than the clichés lead us to believe. It’s not about convincing customers to purchase solutions they don’t need or want. It’s not about pushing for a signed contract for the thrill of a commission check. Top performers don’t extract value from customers, they add it.
Top performers don’t extract value from customers, they add it.”
My mentors taught me that my job is to help my customers achieve their personal and business goals. To do this, I had to learn:
- Industry expertise: These insights can help customers see challenges and opportunities they may not have. Salespeople are in a great position to deliver insight because they talk to multiple customers about the problems their products solve.
- Curiosity and empathy: Asking great questions and genuinely caring about the answers is the only way to help customers achieve their goals.
- Guiding the process: It’s a salesperson’s responsibility to create a framework for evaluation, decision and implementation.
How do revenue results and client relationships change when salespeople take a consultative approach to their work?
The sales field has changed dramatically in the last few decades. No one wants to be “sold to” because they’ve been burned by bad actors in the past. Prospective customers don’t tolerate unpleasant customer experiences because they can conduct research and buy a product online.
When salespeople on my team transform into consultants, they deliver better results and enjoy their jobs more. Many have doubled their revenue bookings by making this shift. Consultative salespeople earn their customers’ time and trust by bringing insight and empathy to every interaction, and their conversations are more interesting and powerful. They invest their time in the right opportunities by determining early on if the product can provide meaningful value to a customer, which drives bigger deals and faster sales cycles. Consultative salespeople spend much less time chasing customers. Instead, they build strong relationships with their customers that last far beyond the evaluation. The trust and relationships they engender accrue in the form of referrals and future opportunities; this all results in higher quota achievement.
What would you say to a person or team that is resistant to the idea of shifting to a more consultative approach?
It’s simple: You have a choice. On one hand, with a consultative approach, salespeople will drive more revenue for your company by outselling the competition, make more money by smashing quotas, and find more fulfillment in their career knowing they’re doing right by their customers.
On the other hand — extractive and transactional side — you’ll find customers increasingly unwilling to speak with you, commission checks drying up and jobs harder to come by.
Mesh is a fully automated and unified financial management platform for finance teams.
Have you always had a consultative approach to sales, or is this a relatively new shift for you?
Moving to a consultative sales approach was more of an evolutionary, gradual process for me, rather than a deliberate shift. When I look back at my first sales experience when I was young and working in retail, it was all hustle and pushing customers to buy.
As my career progressed, I realized that approach missed the most important thing about sales, which is understanding the needs of your customer. If you just try to push your product and don’t listen to their needs, it’s not going to work. That approach may have worked in the past. But in today’s climate, with the need to differentiate yourself from competitors, a sales approach that doesn’t account for customer needs is going to fail. Not to mention, even if you succeed in selling a solution that doesn’t meet a customer’s needs, you’re trading long-term success for a short-term win.
The consultative approach will help you build a long-term relationship with your customers. If you sell customers something that actually meets their needs, you’re much more likely to establish a successful long-term relationship, which has much more value.
How do revenue results and client relationships change when salespeople take a consultative approach to their work?
Building a relationship is about building trust. If you approach your customer as a consultant and an industry expert, and you ask the right questions and share knowledge with them to help them understand their bottom line KPIs, they appreciate you more and share.
The feedback from customers can spur development of your own roadmap as a salesperson, but also encourage changes for your product. The lessons you learn from one customer can be applied to other customers to provide them with an even better solution.
This demonstrates the value of the relationship with your customer. Ultimately, you can move beyond the salesperson-customer relationship and form a real partnership. In our industry, the product is free, so the strength of the relationship is critical in determining long-term success.
The consultative approach can be summed up most simply as relationship-based sales.’’
What would you say to a person or team that is resistant to the idea of shifting to a more consultative approach?
I would use the consultative approach to sell them on shifting. I would ask about their goals and what they want to achieve. Do they want to simply sell a product, or do they want to sell a solution and solve problems? Most importantly, I would ask them what kind of relationship they want with their customers.
You can’t approach a team or a professional and push a new method on them and force them to use it. You need to understand what they want to achieve and then explain how the consultative approach is the method you use to achieve your own goals.
I would also point out that as your product becomes more complex, and as you move to approach larger customers who will spend more money, the relationship aspect of sales becomes key. The consultative approach can be summed up most simply as relationship-based sales. If they want to take their sales efforts in a bigger direction, the consultative approach is the way to go.
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