People Strategies: Selling vs. consulting results in great debate

Linda Bower is a speaker, executive coach and human performance improvement consultant in Rogersville.

The idea that consultants are somehow better than salespeople has become a popular notion. People with sales titles want to be consultants. People with consultant titles often look at salespeople with disdain. In some circles this has caused a major debate about the differences between being a salesperson and being a consultant.

The most black-and-white definition is that salespeople get paid for representing a company; consultants get paid for their personal expertise, independently or in addition to company solutions. In the strictest sense, when salespeople can add their time to a project, they have entered the realm of the consultant.

By this definition, a salesperson can sell without consulting, but a consultant can't consult without selling. Salespeople win all the time without getting paid specifically for their personal expertise. Consultants don't get their time paid unless they convince someone to pay for it, which involves selling.

The word "consultative" has caused much of the confusion behind the debate about the differences between the two roles. The level of "consultativeness" is not an appropriate way to distinguish between them because both salespeople and consultants must be equally consultative. There is no basis for looking down on salespeople.

Being consultative may be defined as "focusing on customer issues with the intent to help further customer business objectives." There are three interdependent activities that are important to being consultative: customer interaction, solution development and strategic planning.

Customer interaction is at a heightened level when being consultative. The relationships are deeper and span multiple levels and divisions. Meeting dialogue is about business strategies, critical success factors and financial goals. The customer has difficulty remembering that the salesperson works for someone else.

Solution development requires a thorough understanding of the company's product and service capability and its human-resource capacity. Consultative salespeople navigate and influence their own organization when required to achieve customer satisfaction. Innovation and creativity typify their solutions.

Strategic planning is the hardest thing to get a salesperson to learn and do, especially a successful one. But a salesperson would not, should not and could not be considered truly consultative without embracing this activity. Strategic planning is where the important decisions are made, priorities are set and tactics become clear. If the salesperson does not know where the relationship is going, how can the customer be expected to go there?

By mastering these three activities, salespeople clearly set themselves apart from the pack. Customers see it, management sees it, other salespeople see it, and the person who writes the commission checks sees it. This degree of "consultativeness" is so superior that maybe it should carry the title of consultant even if time isn't invoiced.

The responsibility to enable salespeople to be more consultative is mostly in the hands of the company. Employers should: set clear expectations that salespeople should become more consultative; define what it means to be consultative in your company; and take the definition to the level of expected behaviors and measurable activities.

Encourage everyone in the company to think creatively about solution development to aid salespeople in solving customer problems. Salespeople need far more information than technical specs to represent the company appropriately. Consider all the ways to interpret the power of your products and services and make it easier for folks to represent them in the field.

The best consultative salespeople develop their own planning tools if the company doesn't require them. The best companies require them. "Gut" selling is high risk. Decide the elements of planning you require, and institute them immediately. Make this activity part of why they get paid a base salary. Besides, the company is entitled to capture marketplace information, and managers need information to manage.

If a company and its salespeople take consultative selling seriously, salespeople will likely surpass the capability of most titled consultants. Then maybe they will look upon consultants with disdain and the debate will go the other way.