The Four types of Selling and why they Matter

In my Ten years of been in the market field I come to terms to know that people will first buy you before anything you present. Today, selling has become an integral part of the global economy, with various models such as B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) sales, e-commerce, and digital marketing. While the methods and technologies have evolved, the core concept of selling remains: connecting products and services with those who need or desire them.

You must always understand that Sales is the dynamic and essential process of connecting products, services, or ideas with potential customers. It involves understanding customer needs, building relationships, and effectively communicating how a product or service can provide value and solve their problems. Follow this four ways of how to sell and why they are essential:

 Transactional selling

The lowest rung of selling is transaction selling (trust us when we say it is barely selling). Transactional selling is exactly what the name outlines. Customer asks question A, sales individual replies to question A. Customer asks for a discount, sales individual gives 10%. You get the picture. There is minimal pro-activeness and hope is the main strategy of this system. Transactional selling is only in a type of selling because there is an attempt to close out business. Needless to say, transactional selling is the starting point of a sales individual’s career and if they don’t move out of this type of selling the end of their careers also.

Feature selling

Sadly, many of the sales individuals we have spoken to over a period of time are stuck in the feature selling space. Feature selling is all about answering customer questions with a feature.

For example:

Customer: I want to buy a phone.

Sales individual: Great! what do you want in a phone?

Customer: Something with a good camera.

Sales individual: I have just the phone for you, here is the XYZ phone. It has a 16 MP camera, a very loud speaker phone and above all….

We are sure you have been subjected to this kind of sales pitch in the past. This method only works if you are lucky or if everything you say is exactly or largely what the customer is looking for. Not to mention, such comparisons usually end in pricing comparisons.

Feature selling is also the best way to bore a prospect before he becomes a customer. Talking to a customer non-stop about product features that are not relevant to him will bore him, no matter how patient your prospect is or how good your pitch is.

Value Selling

For a very long time, value selling was at the pinnacle of sales. People who were able to value sell were successful and closed business effortlessly. Even today, most sales individuals that can value sell are successful.

I truly believe there is nothing wrong with value selling and it serves a lot of purposes. The only time value selling fails is in large B2B deals. Larger deals are complex and demonstrating value alone does not ensure success. Value selling works effortlessly when it comes to smaller ticket deals where the sales cycle is not very large.

However, as per CEB’s exhaustive research nearly 5.4 stake holders are involved in a standard B2B sale. This means that it takes more than just value selling to close deals. I would like to clarify that it is not possible to do get to the next level of selling without first understanding the basics of value selling.

Consultative selling

As it stands today, consultative selling is the highest level of selling. It is selling Zen. We are sure, the day is not far when a new level of selling does not come to the fray. Consultative selling involves everything in value selling but adds elements like industry insights, consulting (instead of selling) to the equation. To put it in words, a consultative sales pitch will involve much more than just pitching the value.

For example:

Sales Individual: "As you might be aware that 5% of all users are currently using their mobile phones to make these videos. I understand you have already invested in the desktop side of the business, but our research shows that mobile is the future. I am sending across a whitepaper for your perusal".

The above pitch is coming from a sales individual that sells primarily desktop products. The point we are trying to make is, that consultative sellers are not trying to introduce just their products but also trying to act as a true consultant to their prospects. While the above is a small example in the world of consultative selling, it should point out to the maturity needed to pull it off.