With the public and private sectors dealing with a constant lack of confidence and cut backs in spending budgets, and competition becoming more aggressive every single day, sales people across a variety of industries are now working in environments which have become more challenging than ever before. With ongoing debt troubles and little sign of a considerable recovery around the corner, it is unlikely that things will brighten up in the short term.

Constrained spending and uncompromising competition is a result of the range of pressures which are now facing senior buyers, making them have to work with greater tenacity to succeed in today’s marketplace. In turn, the positions of sales and business development professionals have become far more difficult. Buying decisions are now being decided upon on by price (i.e. commoditised) or they are being viewed as strategic decisions, made at a much more senior level, regardless of the size of their corporation.

If sales professionals want to be successful at winning strategic and more profitable business, they need to be more active and sell at a higher level.

But senior executives don’t want to simply be sold a product or service... They want a proactive consultative sale that delivers real value, return on investment and immediate returns in terms of cash flow. For this reason, traditional sales techniques, such as Feature Advantage Benefit (FAB) selling, no longer work!

Traditional sales people need to smarten up and their selling techniques need to evolve in the process. Consultative selling is the way forward, even for SMEs. Instead of pushing the features, advantages and benefits of a product or service, sales people must understand and take advantage of the external pressures and internal pain-points facing their clients and prospects. They then need to understand the client’s world and align their solutions with their clients’ biggest pains and desires.

Today master sales people open discussions around the client’s world before aligning the client’s needs and desires with their solution. If you can do this you will significantly improve your sales technique. This will enhance your sales performance and realized earnings, and will assure you of sales success - so long as you are capable of get meetings in the first place!

But senior executives are even less reachable these days since they are trying to succeed in a much more challenging world and there are a lot of sales professionals out there trying to steal their time to ask them pointless questions or tell them about the latest amazing product or service.

People in a selling position need to be much smarter if they’re going to succeed in today’s world of B2B sales. If they can’t be smarter, they must work smarter. They need practical and repeatable selling tools and techniques - whether they are selling products, services or a complex mix of both. A true mastery of the art of consultative selling will help you achieve this.