Under the Weather? Could be “Commodity Flu”

By Chuck Terry, Executive Vice President & Chief Sales Officer

It’s flu season and the sales profession is getting hit hard. You know the symptoms… poor customer appetite (lagging sales), blurred vision (difficulty differentiating your products/services from the competition), nausea brought on by constant pricing issues, and severe headaches for a sales team plagued by disloyal customers. It’s a clear case of Influenza Commodicus, more commonly known as the COMMODITY FLU. And if left untreated, the prognosis is not good.

The term “commoditize” is defined by Webster’s dictionary as “to render (a good or service) widely available and interchangeable with one provided by another company.” Sound familiar? In today’s fast paced, internet accessible world, even companies whose product and/or services were formerly highly differentiated are struggling to maintain a premium price point in the face of feverish competitive pressure.

More and more, senior executives are struggling with the dilemma of how to teach their sales force to not only communicate value but claim back the value traditionally associated with their products and services. The indisputable fact is, the more your product or service becomes interchangeable with your competitors, the more important your sales team becomes as agents of value. The million dollar question is, “How healthy is your sales team?” Are they up to the challenge?

If commoditization is the great pandemic hitting the sales profession, then consultative selling is the cure. No, it’s actually better than a cure. It’s the vaccine that could have prevented this dreadful disease. But if you’ve already got the commodity bug… now what?

It’s not too late to apply treatment! Getting your sales team selling in a consultative manner is the first line of attack in claiming the value needed for any level of premium pricing. Few sales leaders will dispute the diagnosis. But the cure often seems illusive. “How do we get there from here?” is the question I hear most often from sales leaders. If only the cure were available in pill form!

A recent Carew whitepaper entitled “5 Steps to Building a Consultative Sales Force” details a plan for the conversion of your sales team to consultative selling. Below are a few highlights:

1) Define what “consultative selling” means in your organization and outline what that behavior looks like.
2) Develop a system for quantifying how your products/services add additional profitability to your customers’ businesses. The greater your sales team’s ability to demonstrate the impact of your value proposition on their customer’s profitability, the easier it will be to sell.
3) Provide training to equip your sales team to sell in a new, consultative manner. Support with additional coaching to ensure their motivation and success.
4) Institutionalize consultative selling within your company from the top down. Training alone is not enough. The sales management team must own the process. That means leaders will set expectations for the new behavior, model the new behavior, coach to the new behavior and give feedback tied to the new behavior.
5) Communicate the importance of this change. In today’s business climate, consultative selling is truly a matter of survival. Failure to cure this disease has already proven fatal to many! You can’t just mandate change, your sales team must clearly understand what is in it for them.

The world is changing and solid customer relationships are no longer enough. While establishing strong relationships with clients is as critical as ever, it no longer carries the day. The great relationships, service, quality etc. that used to be the hallmarks of differentiation are no more than the minimum daily requirement today. To gain market share or protect margins in today’s increasing climate of commoditization, the successful sales professional will partner with the customer to add true value -- in the form of increased profitability at their customers’ bottom line.

Implementing consultative selling in your sales organization is not a quick, easy fix. No magic elixir here. But in the absence of a robust, high growth economy, it’s your best prescription for success.