The challenge for sales professionals is to sense when their customers want to buy using the transactional approach vs. The consultative sale. Generally transaction selling works best when the customer wants little or no information on the product, and their need for sales support is low, according to Benfield, 2001.
Examples of this include the selling of pocket radios both through retailers and over the Internet.
Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses
The strengths and weaknesses of each approach are defined in bullet form below:
Consultative Selling
Strengths
Focus is on the customer and their problem areas first, not on just making the sale
Salesperson becomes the expert and eventually trusted advisor to the prospect or customer
Value delivered to the customer is greater than the price paid; there is in other words a very strong ROI for the customer
Weaknesses
Can result in long sales cycles that often do not yield any sold products
At times prospects will enlist the help of a trusted advisor to learn how to drive down the price of competing products
Costs of salespeople who are experts in fields is quite high
Enterprise Selling
Strengths
Team-based selling that combines multiple experts on the same team to solve a problem
High level of motivation from prospects and customers to solve a specific problem leads to teaming with the sales experts in any given account
Focus is again...
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