Effective Selling Skills
presented at
Lorache Consulting, Lagos Nigeria
Daniel Chinagozi
PalmNet Consult Ltd.

5 Indicators That You’re a Transactional
Sales Professional
• Over the past several years we have been
hearing how our industry continues to
become more and more commoditized.
• There are a number of reasons for this
including low barriers to entry
• But another reason why the industry has
become commoditized-one that is hardly ever
mentioned-is how sales professionals in the
training and Consulting industry sell services

Indicator One
• This classic transactional sales tactic is by far the
most common and most deadly. “Hi Mr.
customer, it’s Edith Orji from Lorache Consulting,
I was calling to check in. Do you have any training
needs?”
• This transactional statement (and close ended
question) kills a conversation in seconds. I could
go on and on about all of the reasons why you
need to avoid this. If this is part of your Sales
Approach, do everything in your power to stop it
ASAP.

Indicator Two
• Sales Reps who push for face to face meetings on cold calls
(and/or before they have earned the right for a meeting) is
another classic example of transactional selling.
I get it;
• we all want and need face to face meetings in order to
build relationships. But you can’t ask for a face to face
meeting before you have earned the right to that meeting..
• When sales reps push and push for that meeting they
inadvertently make the prospect uncomfortable. And that
makes selling to that prospect even more challenging
because you set the expectation that you’re a transactional
sales rep. Sales is about establishing credibility and
building trust.

Indicator Three
• “Mr. Customer, I saw on Punch/Thisday/The Sun that you’re
currently looking to hire a….” This approach (along with all of the
others) tells the customer you know nothing about their business
and that you have no interest in learning about their business. It
also demonstrates that you’re lazy and invested zero time into the
sales call.
• Worse of all, you sound like all of your competitors. What this
approach does tell your prospect however is that you are interested
in only one thing, making the transaction.
• Ask yourself, are you out to make the “one-time transaction,” or are
you out to build a long term relationship?
• I suspect you want long term relationships. Assuming so, make
sure your sales behavior reflects that.

Indicator Four
• Accepting a job description via email (or without
actually talking with the client about the requirements)
as a QUALIFIED job requirement.
• A job description (training description) is simply the
launching point for having a conversation with your
customer about their project goals, objectives and
challenges they face. If you’re relying on matching
buzzwords with a job description and buzzwords on a
resume, you’re a transactional sales
professional. Taking a client’s training and Consulting
requirement is actually one of only a few opportunities
to differentiate yourself from your competition, take
advantage of it

Indicator Five
• Leading with and/or talking about a “broadcast
message” is another classic example of transactional
selling. A “broadcast message” is when the sales
professional goes on and on about their products and
services, or their “unique value proposition” and their
explanation of why they think they are so different
from their competitors.
• And remember, all the information contained in a
broadcast message can be found on your web site. If
your customer has questions they will go to your web
site or they will ask you. You don’t need to tell this
information until they ask.

The worse thing of all about transactional selling
is the message it sends to your
prospects. Customers need to hear and feel that
you actually care about them and their
business.
You can’t do that when you sell transactionally.

Five Tips & Examples For Consultative
Selling
• Truly superb salespeople have an intimate knowledge of
the structure of a sales call. They are in complete
control … they know where they’re going and what they
want to accomplish at every point in the dialogue. They
take nothing for granted and never lose direction as they
focus on probing, learning, and intimately understanding
everything possible about a client’s needs before
discussing any product – so that their response to client
needs is truly consultative and adds real value.
• PalmNet’s Consultative Selling Skills Program takes an in-
depth look at the critical structure of a sales call or client
meeting and provides a powerful roadmap for a
successful, need-based dialogue.

Example Number One-Adjust Your
Mindset
The first thing to understand about applying a consultative sales
approach is that it is as much (and maybe more) about adjusting your
mindset than it is about applying new sales skills. Consultative selling
is a TWO-WAY conversation, it’s not a monologue, it’s not scripted,
and the sales person certainly shouldn’t be using “tie down” questions
such as “do you want to meet on Tuesday or is Wednesday better?”
There is no manipulation and there are no “steps” to complete (as you
see with traditional sales methodologies).
Consultative selling is a real, open, honest and transparent
conversation with your client about their challenges and how you and
your product or service may be able to solve those challenges.
Consultative selling is often counter-intuitive to “traditional” sales
approaches and tactics. It’s an old cliché but oh so true-if you truly care
about your customer’s business and they know it, good things will
happen.

Example Number Two-Identify,
Diagnose and Co-Create
• Consultative selling is not about leading with or talking
about your products and services and internal
processes. It’s about identifying the critical business issues
your customer’s face and diagnosing those challenges
through the effective use of probing questions while
simultaneously expressing empathy for their situation so
that they feel understood.
• After you identify and diagnose their challenges the next
step is to understand the impact of the problem and then
collaborate with the customer and co-create a solution.
Keep in mind, to do this you must first establish credibility
and trust with the customer so that they feel comfortable
in sharing this information with you.

Example Number Three-Building
Credibility
How do you build credibility and earn the trust of executive stakeholders you
ask? This is not an all-inclusive list, but here are a few things that you must
do. Executives EXPECT you to know this…
 Situational Knowledge-You must be able to demonstrate that you
understand what is going on in your customers business. This is the ticket
to admission.
 Functional Knowledge- You must be able to demonstrate that you
understand what is going on in your customers industry and functional
role they serve.
 Technical Competency-You must bring some technical competency to the
conversation
 Fresh Ideas & Insight-You need to bring some ideas to the table that your
customer would benefit from
 Benchmarking Data-Executives love benchmarking data. You should know
what kind of data they would be interested in and share it with them

Example Number Four-Understand What Your
Customers Think About & How They Think
• You need to understand how your customers think and
what they think about. Selling becomes so much
easier when you understand these two things. As a
general rule, all business executives are thinking about
their “current state” and their “desired future state.”
• Your job is to uncover what those are and what gap or
pitfalls lie between their “current state” and their
“desired future state.”
• This is accomplished through the use of effective
probing questions. The gap you identify between the
two is your sales opportunity.

Example Number Five-Impactful Story
Sharing
• All customers love to hear good, impactful success stories,
especially those that are related to their desired future
state. It’s the job of the sales professional to understand all
of the success stories their company has to offer.
• More importantly, when the sales person is engaged in a
conversation with a prospect it is their job to recognize
which success story should be shared with the client based
on their knowledge of that prospects “current state” and
“desired future state.”
• Lastly, an impactful success story should detail the specific
challenge(s) the client faced, the solution your company
offered and the business benefits (quantitative preferred)
the client achieved as a result from your solution.

• Again, these are just a few examples of
consultative selling. There are certainly
numerous others but hopefully this can
provide a few new “tools” for your tool box.
Happy Selling!

Other Sales Chats
• Five Tips & Examples For Consultative Selling
• Three Tips For Planning Your 2014 Sales Kickoff Meeting
• Developing Your Business Acumen: What it is and How to Develop it.
• 4 Prospecting Tips-Keys to Opening New Accounts Quicker
• 5 Tips for Running Successful Sales Meetings
• Four Tips for Objection Handling
• Your Sales People Should Be Doing This at Your Kickoff Meeting