One of the things about sales that makes it both difficult and interesting is the paradoxes. Paradoxes are things that appear one way but in practice behave just the opposite. An example would be, “The best things in life are free.”

First, Some Preliminary Information About A Current Sales Paradox
We all know the difference between transactional and consultative selling. Transactional selling typically involves very short sales cycles and minimal customer relationships. Selling a car is normally considered a transactional sale. Consultative selling is just the opposite. It usually requires a long sales cycle and  deeper customer relationships. Selling commercial real estate would be an example.

All of us sell somewhere along the continuum of transactional to consultative sales.

The Paradox
The following may sound completely counter-intuitive, but many sales professionals tend to turn to transactional sales techniques, regardless of what they are selling, during both recessions and boom times. That’s right. We frequently default to task oriented transactional selling during good economic times and bad economic times. This is true whether we’re selling mops or Boeing jets. And it’s never a good thing to become a pure transactional sales professional.

Why Does This Happen?

• During the boom times, like we experienced in the late 90’s, most of us found that we were very successful in our sales.  Who wasn’t?  We also had very little time on our hands. The reason we had such limited time is that we were busy taking orders. As a result, many of us spent insufficient time building partnerships with our customers. Whether we’re selling widgets or space shuttles, this is transactional selling. We’re simply reacting to our customers.
• During recessionary times the orders aren’t coming in so easily anymore.  What does any good sales professional do when this happens? We prospect. In fact, we can become somewhat obsessed with prospecting, to the point where we are merely going through the motions and treating it like a task.  We’ve replaced quality with quantity. When we treat contact with prospects like a task we become mechanical. This absolutely kills our ability to initiate and nurture relationships. We have, without even realizing it, turned into transactional sales professionals. We can do this even if we are selling products and services that usually require long sales cycles and highly developed relationships with customers. In a way, we panic.

Sales Blog Rx
What we sell will affect the types of transactional or consultative sales techniques we use; there is no black or white here. It is a continuum.  However, regardless of what we are selling, we never want to become a pure transactional sales professional. We are selling in a recession currently and our natural reflex is to pound the phone and prospect like a machine. This can be ineffective and frustrating for sales professionals on many levels.

Our heads are screaming to work fast and take shortcuts right now.  We need to prospect, but we also need to qualify our prospects carefully and spend the necessary time to develop a relationship with them.   This will set us apart from the multitude of sales calls the prospect is getting from our competitors. It will also enable us to plant the seeds of relationship that are essential for a partnership.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

Related posts:

1. What The Coast Guard Can Teach Us About Recession Selling Versus Boom Time Selling
2. Transactional Selling Versus Solution Selling
3. Pre-selling

Tags: customers, Prospecting, prospects, recession

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