How to Make Sure Your Sales Consultant Fails (Step One)

I will never forget the day I proposed to my wife. My stomach was in knots: a combination of simple nerves and perhaps fear, acutely aware of the ring that, in spite of its compact size, felt like a refrigerator box nestled awkwardly in my jacket pocket. Should I ask her before dinner or after? What if she says "no?" What if I'm forced to sit there awkwardly waiting for the check after whiffing my proposal? Goodness, what if she says "yes?" Was my mother right? Are we too young to handle the pressures of marriage?

Furtively I fumbled with the box in my pocket and took a deep breath. I will never forget the sparkle in her eyes as I gave her a bulleted list of what we discussed on our last several dates, pulled out a ring and said "here's a ring," then proceeded to down forkfuls of seared ahi while occasionally checking emails on my phone. The next day I sent her an email entitled "following up and next steps," in which I asked her if she thought we'd be able to settle on a wedding date on or before June 21.

Even the most bromidic among us would likely recognize this as a less-than-ideal beginning to our courtship. But what about your last demo? If it bears any resemblance to the NSFAKHM (Not Suitable for a Katherine Heigl Movie) scenario above, read on. This article is the first in a series that will cover how to best set our Sales Consultants up for success in every customer interaction.

Step One: Understand Your Role

Whether you're a salesperson or a sales consultant, you take part in a persuasive process. I typically consult sales and presales teams to view their respective roles as two sides to the same coin: to break down common fallacies so that both teams can operate more effectively. While the list isn't exhaustive, the following are a few of the most prevalent misconceptions:

Fallacy No. 1: Sales reps are strategic, while Sales Consultants are tactical

This misconception is typically a symptom of insufficient collaboration. Under this assumption, the sales team "runs the deal" while the SC "runs the demo." As a result, neither resource adds significant value while operating within the other resource's perceived domain: Sales Consultants contribute little beyond the demo while the salesperson remains nearly silent or disengaged during the demo. This fallacy is particularly challenging to overcome because it requires a culture shift: sales and presales alike need to realize that their role is both strategic and tactical. The salesperson's responsibility is to ensure the forward trajectory of the sales opportunity from inception to close, while the SC ensures that they continually address the changing dynamics of the deal so that it continues its forward trajectory. The salesperson is responsible for managing the operational, logistical and political details of the opportunity, while the SC must continue to respond especially to any political changes that may impact their joint value message and odds of success.

Fallacy No. 2: Sales Consultant = Technical Resource or Product Expert

I'm going to start with a disclaimer here: sometimes Sales Consultants are technical resources, and we would certainly expect them to be product experts. The challenge with this fallacy has less to do with skills than it does with perception.

From the Sales Consultant's perspective, this fallacy is particularly dangerous because the SC can see himself or herself as a non-selling resource. I have found this particularly common among presales organizations that define themselves as "Solution Consultants" or "Solution Engineers," rather than "Sales Consultants" or "Sales Engineers." The minute semantic shift from "Sales" to "Solution" sometimes leads the SC to consider product demonstrations and "keeping the salesperson honest" as his or her primary motivation. Instead, sales and SC organizations should recognize that the SC's internal perception should be that of a salesperson, while maintaining an external perception that they are solution experts intended to serve as the customer's advocate.

Unless you typically sell to a highly technical audience, your audience will likely perceive your highly technical SC as an indication that your solution requires... wait for it... highly technical resources. By positioning your SC as a technical resource, you may introduce fear among your business users that they won't be able to meet the technical rigors that your solution requires.

This is obviously true on a case-by-case basis, but the best SCs I have worked with are typically industry or domain experts first, and technical or product experts second. They are able to speak their customer's language, understand their business challenges, and gauge how technically "deep" they can go without alienating their audience. Sometimes this may require a highly technical SC to temper his or her responses to a technical question, soliciting technical resources for questions they already know how to answer, for the sake of framing and establishing commonality with their audience.

Fallacy No. 3: Salesperson is Batman. SC is Robin.

Trust me: your SC gets it. You get the big check when the deal closes. You're the one with your neck on the block when things go awry. Unfortunately, that reality can also lead to the salesperson's commodification of the SC, or a general perception of apathy on the part of the SC.

This fallacy is particularly difficult for sales and SC teams to overcome because it is wrought with emotion, self-preservation and three general assumptions:

"My SC doesn't care because there is not enough upside."

In a recent conversation with a VP of Sales, he lamented that his Sales Consultants seemed to go radio silent immediately following the demo. The solution? "By paying the SC like a sales rep," he suggested, "we can make them care." While his assumption makes sense (I have some specific ideas on the ideal SC compensation model that I may include in a future article), I stopped short of advocating his position for two reasons.

First, I believe that all or most of us desire to be as useful as a given situation allows us to be. While money can provide a (usually short-term) net increase in engagement, I believe his problem was that his sales and SC teams had never agreed on their respective roles. If the Sales Consultant knew that his or her job involved helping identify stakeholders and ensuring their buy-in from a product perspective, the Sales Consultant would likely do their job not (entirely) because of the potential for financial gain, but because doing your job well is part of being a productive human being.

Second, I believe his organization actually suffered from the Batman and Robin conundrum. Specifically, everyone had just accepted the notion that Sales was Batman and the SC team was Robin.

Given I'm not enough of a comic book fanboy to even fathom why Robin's character exists in the first place, but for the layperson it looks like this: Batman is entirely self-sufficient. Why he needs a colorful sidekick whose only contributions are equally colorful uses of the word "holy" escapes the casual viewer. The end result is uncomfortable and confusing. Nobody really knows why he's there, but someone else decided there needed to be an "and Robin," so he's there. Robin doesn't even know why he's there, except to avoid getting in Batman's way and occasionally using his tools to slightly tip things in Batman's favor.

...or else he's just Batman-in-training, which leads me to the next point.

"Aren't Sales Consultants just future salespeople, anyway?"

Perhaps because there's less financial upside, because the SC hierarchy tends to be significantly flatter than sales hierarchies, because sales titles tend to sound more "executive" than SC titles, or because of Fallacy No. 1, it's easy to wonder why someone would choose Sales Consulting as a career path. A natural assumption might be that Sales Consulting is an incubator for employees to develop their chops on their way to their "real" career in quota-carrying sales.

The truth is that most Sales Consultants don't move into field sales roles. Most Sales Consultants pursue the career because they can still earn decent money without the risk and stress associated with directly carrying a quota.

The most successful Sales Consultants realize that they are salespeople with a unique role: one that allows them to advance the sale while also providing consultative value to the customer. They value their role as a domain expert, and their allegiance is equally shared between their external customer (the client) and their internal one (the sales team).

Sales controls the Sales Consultant's sphere of influence.

When sales teams fail to recognize the strategic value that the Sales Consultant has to offer, when they see them primarily as product- or technically-focused resources, or when the Sales Consultant is generally disengaged from the sales process, it is easy to view them as commodities whose sole value lies in the extent to which they are immediately useful to the sales rep. To put it another way, Sales Consultants are commodified when their sales team controls when, where and how they will engage with the customer.

Signs and symptoms of a commodified SC team:

• Sales reps typically set the time, date and location for a customer meeting before engaging the SC team. As a result, finding the "best SC for the job" is seldom more than a scheduling exercise.
• "Dry run" meetings are primarily intended to critique or review the demo, with no bilateral discussions on alignment.
• Sales Consultants have no significant customer contact prior to the demo.
• Sales reps frequently tell the SC to "click on that..." or "show [x] feature" during the demo.

The most successful sales and SC teams I have seen view Sales Consultants as strategic partners, working together to ensure the consistent, forward trajectory of the deal. In my next article, I will outline how sales and SC teams can work together to paint a cohesive vision for the customer, prove that vision with each customer interaction, and quickly respond to changes in the political and competitive elements of each sales opportunity.

Has this article been helpful? Is there anything you think I've missed? Agree or disagree? Please let me know in the comments!