In a world selling commodities, the Trusted Advisor is worth more than a Salesperson.  But how much more?

Salesperson ….  Skilled Salesperson …. Trusted Advisor

I am a big believer in the value of becoming a Trusted Advisor.  Lately however, I have been working with agribusinesses and salespeople on the concept of what that is worth.  There is obviously not an exact answer to this question, but you need to do some discovery around this topic. 

First, a few definitions.

A Salesperson is someone who learns a lot about their products, goes out into the marketplace and applies the selling process to sell their products.  Wow, not a shocker.  It’s just what we think a salesperson does.  Learns a lot about their products and sells them using the 5 step or 6 step selling process. 

However, a salesperson soon realizes there are many competitors out there who have good salespeople who know a lot about their products.  And, they use the same selling process:  Ask questions – find a need – present – close – follow up.

Skilled Salesperson:  To gain an advantage, a salesperson will dig deeper and learn more about how their products affect their customers business.  They might learn how to customize their products for the geography they are in.  Or they might find alternative uses and benefits from some of their products.  They move from a singular focus of selling their products to a broader scope of the primary function of their customer’s business.

This helps but our skilled salesperson still runs into quite a bit of competition.  They are skilled enough to explain how their products compare against the competition.  They sell the value of their products over competitors.  Again, this helps but selling is still difficult in competitive markets.

These are very common situations in sales.  Especially in those first few years.  Your focus is on your products and how your products work in your customer’s business.  As you develop in your selling skills, you realize there is another level of selling:  the trusted advisor. 

The Trusted Advisor is a salesperson that has made the transition from selling products to being completely immersed in their industry.  Their knowledge and connections in the industry make buying from them a completely different experience.  They not only know about their products; they know other product lines.  They know about the big picture decisions of their customer’s business.  At times, they know more about their customer’s business than the customer does.    

 This is a great spot to be in.  As a trusted advisor, you are “Trusted”.  Your customer grants you an honorary seat on their board of directors.  You are brought in on decisions ahead of time.  And brought in on decisions not related to your product line. 

I have worked around many of these trusted advisor salespeople and watched as they faced less price objections and shorter selling time lines.  Customers will buy from this salesperson based on their word or recommendation.  I’ve also had several of these experiences in my own selling career.  You too can have these if you aren’t already.  For more information on becoming a Trusted Advisor see The 7 Essential Selling Skills

The trusted advisor brings more to the farm than products.  They provide guidance, consulting, counselling and even friendship, if it works out.

Now, the question posed, “What is it worth?”  And “to Who?

Again, I am a big believer in the value of becoming a Trusted Advisor.  To use this status properly, we need to figure out as best we can what that is worth. 

If you are going to

• spend 20 years in an industry
• provide a wide array of consulting
• give up the personal time it takes

then, you should be rewarded with less price resistance and more customer loyalty.  Agreed, but how much?

One way to determine this is check your pricing against your competitor on similar products.  If you are $20/ton higher and your customer is still buying from you, then that’s what your worth.  Another method could be to ask your very best customers.  You have built a lot of trust with them and should feel comfortable having this type of conversation. 

Lastly, you can tie your increased price to the value of what you bring to the customer.  If your industry knowledge and network of resources prevents livestock death loss or provides increased production, then that becomes part of what you are worth.  These are real dollars a customer makes when working with you.

The really important question.  “Who is willing to pay you what you are worth?”  Here lies the challenge that I have been working with salespeople and sales teams on.  It took time and money to get you to this trusted advisor status.  Product training, selling skills training, years of selling, and hours of coaching discussions with your manager have been spent getting you to this status.  If you are telling your manager that you have to match penny for penny compared to your competition on pricing, what is that telling you and your manager? 

Two answers to that question:  First, you might not be a trusted advisor to your customers.  You think you are, but if customers are not willing to pay for it, then you are not.  As salespeople, we tend to think of ourselves as caring, supportive and interested in helping our customer as much as making the sale.  This can lead us to believe that we are a trusted advisor. 

Second, you might be applying this trusted advisor role to the wrong customers.  There are those customers in the world who are not going to pay one penny more for a consultative style salesperson.  We need to understand this, get over it and not spend time with them.  We can still sell to them, but not spend the time that it takes to be a trusted advisor. Move on to those who appreciate it by rewarding you with their loyalty. 

Final thought on this concept.  The pandemic has really challenged our Go-to-market strategy.  If you have a highly skilled, experienced sales staff that requires a large budget to maintain, you have to be rewarded with higher margins and customer loyalty.  If not, many managers are questioning the need for this type of sale force.  In a consulting role, I have spent many hours on this topic in relation to who is hired, how they are compensated and how their territory should be structured.  The answers aren’t easy, but it’s worth the effort to run through this type of exercise.

As salespeople, we are always striving to provide a better level of service than our competition.  We strive to be seen as a trusted resource.  We go above and beyond the expectations of our customers in the hopes of achieving that loyalty.  The last piece of that puzzle is making sure we maintain a profitable business by getting paid for our role as a Trusted Advisor.

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Go from being a Good Salesperson to a Trusted Advisor

This virtual training course takes you through the process of becoming that trusted advisor to your customers.

Establishing yourself as the Go-To Salesperson to buy from.  Learn how to build your brand in the market to reduce objections.

“I bring everything I have to this course to show you a clear path on how to overcome the most common problems salespeople have in agribusiness. Along with my 30 years of selling and leading sales people, I pull from thousands who have gone through my training programs in the last five years.”

Click on the links above to watch the free webinar and enroll in the course to go from a good salesperson to a trusted advisor

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