You hear salespeople and sales managers throw around the word consultative sales. But the reality is that the majority of people who talk about this are not performing consultative selling at all. To demonstrate this, in this video, we outline what is not consultative sales.

In this video, we list out what sales reps often and the interesting thing about this list is that each point is the exact opposite of what consultative selling is, and you could call this sales approach “product selling.”

Focuses on talking about the product
What a lot of salespeople do is spend a lot of their time talking about the product they sell. Yes, there is a time to discuss the product, but product-selling sales reps often talk primarily about what they sell when talking with a prospect. This is usually apparent and detrimental on cold calls, emails, or in-person conversations.

“All about me” approach
When a salesperson talks primarily about their product and company, this can often be an “all about me” type of conversation style. This is the opposite of consultative sales, which will be more about the prospect – “all about you”.

Assumes that every prospect needs the product
A product selling rep assumes that every prospect they cross paths with needs and should buy their product.

A consultative salesperson sells to prospects who have a need for the product, and that starts with trying to determine if the prospect is a fit or has a need that the product can fill.

Tries to sell the product to every prospect
Because this type of salesperson assumes that every prospect needs or should buy their product, they try to sell to every prospect that they interact with.

Focuses on selling products to prospects
This type of salesperson focuses on selling products to prospects. That is the opposite of consultative sales, which focuses more on providing solutions to prospects’ needs.

Tries to sell the product at every sales process step
A product selling rep will try to make the prospect interested in purchasing the product at every step of the sales process. In consultative selling, a rep may focus more on selling the prospect on moving to the next step in the sales process.

The salesperson does most of the talking
A product-selling rep will end up doing most of the talking when interacting with prospects. In consultative selling, the prospect will either do more or an equal amount of talking.

Pitch centers around explanations and descriptions
A product-selling rep will have a pitch that is comprised primarily of details and descriptions of the product and what it does.

Talks about the product to try to make the prospect interested
This type of sales rep will usually just talk about the product features and details to try to make the prospect interested. If the prospect is not interested, he or she will just keep talking about the product or go into more detail in hopes that something may click on the prospect’s side.

A consultative salesperson will talk more about benefits and the prospect’s needs and challenges to create more interest.

Focuses on the salesperson’s interests
The salesperson’s interests are closing sales, hitting targets, and making commissions. The prospect has completely different interests, and some of those are increasing their income or revenue, decreasing costs, improving their business, and making good decisions for purchases.

A product selling rep operates primarily focusing on their own interests. In consultative sales, you either lead by focusing on the prospect’s interests or keeping both parties’ interests at the top of your mind.