Sales, marketing... and sweaters

What do folding sweaters and writing proposals for consulting work have in common?

In Philip Delves Broughton’s Life’s a Pitch, he argues that companies need to be clear about the extent to which their sales people can influence a sale.  In real estate, the sales person who takes a prospective buyer around properties clearly carries a lot of weight, so it makes sense to invest in them.  A supermarket by contrast relies on marketing, promotions, prices etc to get customers to buy and, at most, they need their staff to smile and be efficient: investing in their sales’ skills doesn’t make sense.  Broughton also suggests that most sales people in shops are far more comfortable in the stock room folding jumpers or talking to their colleagues, than they are trying to sell to customers.

The relationship between sales and marketing in a consulting firm has always been an uncomfortable one.  There was a time when consulting firms didn’t have to do either – clients just walked in off the street – and, even now, the idea that you might have to sell seems a tacit acknowledgement of failure.  “If we were really good at what we do, then clients would come to us,” the reasoning seems to go.  But it’s clear that the real estate model now applies – and investment in sales training, already high in many firms, is on the rise.  However, there’s also a sense of the supermarket: the sheer size and scale of the biggest consultng firms can’t be maintained by individual sales people alone: thought leadership, PR and even advertising all play a role in increasing the consulting equivalent of footfall.

That brings us on to the far thornier issue of sweaters.  Anyone who’s been to a seminar organised by a consulting firm will know that the consultants, ostensibly there to strengthen their client relationships, tend to huddle in corners, talking to each other.  And it’s not just in seminars that this behaviour exhibits itself: when pitching to clients, how much more time is spent on writing the proposal and/or refining the PowerPoint deck, than is spent talking to clients?

If there were sweaters to hand, consultants would probably go to fold them.

Broughton’s book has two interesting things to say about this behaviour.  The first is that it’s fuelled by a fear of rejection.  Consultants are just like everyone else: thin-skinned and insecure.  Few have the ability to deal with – indeed, enjoy rising to the challenge of – clients who say no.  The second is that shop-floor sales people often make the mistake of asking too generic a question: “Can I help you?” It is better, Broughton argues, to take a customer through some quite specific questions in order to understand exactly what the latter is there to buy – his premise being that the customer wouldn’t be in the shop in the first place, so the salesperson’s job is not to make them buy something, but to help them buy what they came in for.

Again, it’s interesting putting that in a consulting context.  How many conversations start off with the consultant asking, “Can I help you?”?  Our research with clients reinforces Broughton’s point, that they have specific needs, want consultants to listen to what they’re looking for, and not ask generic, open-ended questions.  Most clients these days know what they want – if only consultant were prepared to come out from behind the sweaters and ask them.