The Black Belt Selling Guide to Selling From the Left© - Consultative Selling
1. What is Consultative Selling? Consultative selling is a process of diagnosing, shaping and developing your prospect’s needs (and
desires), and then aligning your solution to solve those needs (what we call ‘Selling from the Left®’).
This is in direct contrast to the traditional selling approach i.e. ‘pushing’ Features, Advantages and
Benefits (or ‘FAB’s) at a prospect (what we call ‘Selling from the Right®’) and hoping those FAB’s
happen to align to the prospect’s burning desires or needs!
It’s simple – if you wrote down an analysis of a client’s world on the left and an FAB statement for
your portfolio (or solution) on the right, then consultative selling starts (and spends most of its time)
on the left, before moving over to the right. In contrast, traditional ‘FAB’ selling starts (and spends
most of its time) on the right.
2. Why Consultative Selling is So Important
In today’s world of tougher, business-‐savvy buyers, the traditional ‘Feature, Advantage, Benefit’
selling model no longer works. Buying decisions are typically being made at a more senior level and
senior people don’t care about product or service features. They expect suppliers to bring new,
innovative business solutions and to create tangible value that can be measured (also called a
‘Return on Investment’). For this reason, people who have really mastered consultative selling and can ‘Sell from the Left®’
are winning and earning even more than ever before. Whether they are sales people or business
development professionals, they are in huge demand and typically get rewarded with six figure
salaries.
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2. The ‘MIDAS’ System for ‘Selling from the Left®’ We use a proven and easy-‐to-‐learn (and easy to-‐apply) system called MIDAS for making consultative
selling or ‘Selling from the Left®’ really work.
So what is MIDAS? Well, the ‘M-‐I-‐D’ part of MIDAS represents the client’s world, while the ‘A-‐S’ of
MIDAS represents what you can sell to them.
3.1 M-‐I-‐D: The Client’s World
The M-‐I-‐D of MIDAS stands for the following:
M -‐ Macro and Micro (external) forces. These are external pressures, trends and events that affect
your target organisation (and may well also affect other organisations in the sector or industry). This
is a REALLY crucial element of consultative selling because these external forces represent all of the
known (and unknown) threats and opportunities that the senior decision maker(s) in your prospect
organisation are faced with. You should do a bit of research on their organisation or sector and
choose two or three of the main external trends, pressures or forthcoming events that are likely to
combine to cause a real threat or opportunity for the client in the near or medium term (and which
your solution may be able to help with). A combination of M factors, for instance, might be the
downturn in consumer spending, online competition and VAT increases affecting high-‐street
retailers. This combination of pressures is a really powerful conversation point with an owner of a
high-‐street retailer, if you’ve got something that can help him or her counteract the negative affect
this powerful combination of forces will probably have!
I – the Implications (or ‘Pain-‐Points’) that these external forces have, or will have, on your target
organisation and your target contact’s personal role in that organisation. Your analysis of these
implications should include some sort of calculation or estimate of the financial implications that
could result from his or her failure to respond to a specific combination of external threats and
opportunities that you have identified. In the high-‐street retailer example, this might include sales
volumes falling, revenues falling, stock levels rising, marketing costs rising or profits falling– all of
which will have a direct impact on (and cause pain for) the owner if that’s who you are targeting.
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