Four Types of Sales
- Transactional Sales
- Solution Sales
- Advisory Sales
- Provocative Sales
Transactional Sales
This is the gold standard or benchmark for anyone who thinks about sales.
One of the reasons transactional selling works is because it provides psychological peace of mind for everyone involved. I know I need leads, I need to work on charges, and I need to close deals. This is how we have always envisioned our sales.
Solution Selling
This is the next big leap from Transaction. Instead of focusing solely on your product, focus on your customer’s needs (the common sales term here is ‘problem’) and try to align your product or service to solve your customer’s needs. Selling the
solution works well in situations where the buying cycle is slightly longer, the ROI is high, there are nuanced decision-makers, or too many decision-makers (although this last example can be counterproductive). possible). If someone wants to solve a problem and the solution is in the industry he has been in storage for 10+ years, this approach should be used.
Consulting Sales
This is similar to Solution Sales. The focus is on customer relationships and dialogue with customers about their needs.
This approach is a bit more challenging to implement as it requires a very experienced salesperson. You need someone who intuitively knows how to open up and participate in conversations throughout the customer lifecycle. In other words, we need good listeners and speakers.
Provocative Selling
“Shock and Awe” in a sense, or alerting customers to problems they didn’t even know existed. As HBR points out in that link, it works well during economic downturns. Because people with the ability to write checks don’t want to spend. Again, there’s a certain amount of “eliminate all possibilities except the solution” here.
In a way “shock and awe”, or making customers aware of problems they didn’t even know existed. As HBR points out in that link, it works well during economic downturns.