What are the risks involved in sales consulting work?

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Sales

Sales Consulting

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Don Perkins

asked on Jan. 29, 2012

Dean Sharratt

Principal, Sales Operations Effectiveness, International

Posted on Feb. 1, 2012

There are risks in all sales. There are certainly differences between consulting services sales and commodity product sales that imply risk. Two differences concern the nature of the product and when in the client decision making cycle you meaningfully engage the client buyers. In consulting services sales, particularly with complex solutions, your "product" is a lot less tangible than a hard product (an IBM mainframe). This has implications for how you show your client buyers (and there will be several) that you have the best solution for them. Second, with complex consulting solutions you must engage the buyers earlier in their buying cycle that you likely would if your were selling a commodity. In consulting services you are most successful when you bring a new and compelling way to client buyers that will improve their business performance in a way that they had not previously thought about. So there is a risk that your company has not figured out what truly differentiates their complex consulting service from other competitors, and as result you will have a much more difficult time earning the interest of those client buyers. You will be just one of the "pack" and will likely compete on price. The good news there is a lot of good written work out there on this topic.

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Dean Sharratt Replied on Feb. 1, 2012

A couple of other points to consider; the duration of the client buyer decision cycle can be quite long in complex consulting services opportunitites. If these are not qualified correctly with client buyer buy-in to the potential benefits and to take action I have seen sales people spend a great deal of time and resources on opportunities which in the end the client buyers simply did not make a decision. On many occassions in Sales Ops I had to go through the sales pipeline and get sales managers to clear out deals that were supposed to be closing, but there had been not action on the opportunity for over 100 days! The second thought is that in selling complex solutions the decisions are more often made at very senior levels with the client organization. To complete your sale you need to get infront of these buyers with your compelling story. This is not about only building a relationship, so you really need to have firgured out what to say after you say "Hello". What you say and how you say it in the next 5 minutes will have a big impact on your sales success.