Consultative selling

What is consultative selling?

Consultative selling is acting as an advisor who improves the customer's business results, with the sale as the outcome. Mack Hanan introduced the term in his 1970 book Consultative Selling, published by the American Management Association. Hanan's version asked sellers to sell improved customer profits, to frame the price as an investment with a return, and to work with the operating managers who own results over a long relationship.

Why it matters to a revenue leader

Many B2B sellers now call themselves consultative, so the word has lost precision. Hanan's original standard is still the useful test. A consultative rep can show how the customer's financial results improve and is talking with the people who own those results. In commercial services, that means discussing downtime, compliance risk and labor cost with operations and finance leaders alongside the price per visit.

A facility maintenance rep learns that a distribution center loses about $18,000 for every hour its dock doors are down. The rep proposes a preventive maintenance agreement at $42,000 a year and shows that avoiding three hours of downtime, worth $54,000, more than covers the cost. The operations director takes the case to finance as an investment.