A MANA member recently wrote to say that most of the articles on “Consultative Selling” (CS) appearing in Agency Sales magazine were written by those who did not have to make a living selling. He claimed CS is just another phrase for “customer mooching selling.” I know how the writer feels because I, too, sold process equipment where one had to spend months or years consulting with customer engineers prior to the procurement department going out for competitive bid. I was sometimes thrown under the bus by the customer’s purchasing department later and received zip for my efforts when my principal’s price was 2 percent high.

The writer made a number of excellent points which would seem to prove the idea that CS is not a preferred way to sell technical or engineered products. He cites the facts that many technical consumers of rep knowledge are not decision-makers and their commercial people give one no credit for consulting for free on specs, alternate designs, cost estimates, etc. This is quite often true, as is the fact that these same customers will often pay consultants with less knowledge than the rep $200 per hour for the same advice the rep provides free. Also true is the fact that many young people do not want to enter our profession because it is difficult to make a living working in technical sales, but this is not just because customers are freeloaders.

As one who made an excellent living as a rep selling very technical, process equipment such as reactors and heat exchangers for refineries, I disagree with the member’s overall conclusion. My success as a CS salesperson later allowed me to spend the last nine years of my career working for MANA for a pittance of what I earned as an agency owner.

Not only was my rep company a consultative seller, we built our business holding ourselves up as technically competent, and we ignored some of the time-honored devices such as fishing trips, late nights drinking with customers, football tickets, etc. The difference was, while we expected to get rolled under the bus occasionally, we combined our consultative/technical skills with other aspects that matter in the art of selling. When new, top-of-the-line principals solicit your firm to represent them because your customers recommended you as a technically competent, consultative seller, you’ll agree that this method of selling has many hidden benefits in addition to instant gratification with orders.

Yes, it’s an art, not a science. Technical or product knowledge is just one of a package of skills needed to close more business than your competition. Consider the following as examples.

Understanding the System

The complete salesman will understand the business processes and the culture of the customer. He’ll also determine where the decision-making power really resides. Often the milquetoast engineer who writes the specs has no sway at all in the final purchase. Neither will the purchasing agent in many cases. Project managers, officers, board members, metallurgists, managers of engineering departments and product specialists all may have a say in the successful vendor. If the customer is a major engineering company, his client’s counterparts to these positions will be major players. The point is expensive equipment is usually bought by committee. As the writer mentioned above rightfully points out, the smart rep will find out who the movers and shakers are and focus on them. But, many a rep has been disappointed because he cultivated one or two people on “the committee” and ignored a key player.

Politics

It is not popular to be a North American politician these days, but the complete salesman needs to be sensitive to political influences in the customer’s decision making process.

• Does the purchasing department have an agenda here?

• Does the project manager have a brother in your business?

• Does your customer’s customer have a national agreement with a competitor?

• Is someone trying to use up this year’s budget and thus, doesn’t care about a low price?

We need to know what the prime motivation of the customer is. If his sister’s husband is competing with you, move on.

People-Reading Skills

This skill is critical. I don’t mean you have to master neurolinguistic programming to win, but some people lie. Many salesmen have reported to the principal the order will be forthcoming in two weeks just as soon as the board meets to approve the purchase only to be a surprised loser. Always confirm information you receive from one of the committee members with someone else in the organization.

Most successful reps learn to spot a freeloading customer quickly and refuse to offer free valuable information without some assurance of a payoff. The system of selling taught by the Sandler Sales Institute counsels the husbanding of free information until the seller is sure they can establish the chances of getting an order are high. In other cases, people with strong decision-making power actually may go to bat for you later on if you help them up front. It’s up to us to evaluate all the personalities involved and determine who is trustworthy. If you are good at this, you’ll still get rolled once in a while, but not often.

Craftily Influencing Specifications

As technical salespeople we are expected to be able to help engineer a customer’s spec so our competitors can’t replicate what our principal can do; or at least design it to play to our own strengths and the bad guy’s weaknesses. This is not always possible, but the more sophisticated the product and the higher the dollar value, the better the chance to get a maintenance manager or project manager to pay you off for early information shared. In some cases, early involvement with the technical people allows the seller to “control” the bidders list such that his weaker competitors are only allowed to submit proposals. This happened many times in my selling career and almost always paid off. Sneaky? Yes, but unethical? I don’t think so.

Understanding the Principal’s Strengths and Weaknesses

One of the best time-management tricks I ever discovered was to bow out of competitions for orders where my principal had been historically weak or the customer wanted to have 10 bidders. Many principals refuse to recognize niches in their business where they almost never compete on price or technical prowess. The savvy consultative salesperson avoids these sales cases like the plague. I once instructed a buyer to keep my manufacturer off a bid list when he told me there were nine other bidders. When he wondered why, I told him the low bidder is always the one who makes the biggest mistake on his estimate. Good consultative sellers don’t waste time with cheap customers who try to grind suppliers down and then hold invoices for 60 days before they pay.

Relationship Building

No matter what our technical strengths, part of the art of selling still revolves around relationships. In my 40+ years of manufacturing and selling experience I have concluded that many sales engineers, i.e., those with technical degrees, have limited people skills or have a disposition to trust the one fellow engineer in the back room who cannot pay off with an order. They tend not to cultivate the entire committee. This is because, deep down, the individual only wants to get involved in technical issues. When hiring sales engineers out of college, I always looked for the “C” student who belonged to a fraternity (though I did not) and was involved in lots of extracurricular activities. The straight “A” engineer, often but not always, had limited people skills and played a lot of chess.

Relationship building is a major contributor to a rep’s success, and this is why most reps start their business in a territory where they currently live or once spent time while in their corporate lives. Consultative selling, coupled with long-term relationships with decision makers in your territory, great principals, people skills and an understanding of your customer’s culture and business processes are the winning recipe for success in the rep business today.

Our writer’s complaints were valid, but they did not take into account the other components necessary to be successful in the art of selling. When one combines all the components, sales can be closed 33 percent of the time, and, like batting averages in baseball, that’s enough to make a very good living.

Or, I guess, one can always sell his expertise for $200/hour. $8,000 for a 40-hour week is more than many reps generate through commission sales. In either case, one has to be the complete businessperson, not just a technical wizard.