When the economy dropped out in 2009, an entirely new industry of third-party buying consultants was born. Because the economy fell out, companies were seeking ways to cut costs. At the same time, many company executives were being laid off and needed to create work, so they became third-party buying consultants to companies.
The value that these third-party buying consultants bring to their clients is that they will ultimately earn their fee by helping their clients cut costs. This often means that they are going to try to beat you, the supplier/vendor, down on price and cut out excess value from what you offer. So, we, as salespeople need to bring an entirely different approach to selling to companies that are working with third-party buying consultants.
Three Tips for Dealing with Third-Party Buying Consultants
#1: Be sure that your offering is based on a solution. And what does this mean? It means that you are often bundling together your products and services to focus on creating a solution to your clients’ challenges. Understand exactly what those challenges of your clients are, because this will make it significantly more difficult for even a third-party buying consultant to cut the cost of your offering.
#2: Never sell directly to the consultant. The consultant is never the key decision maker. When dealing with a third-party buying consultant, you should make it your goal to simply build an alliance to bring them on as a champion of your product or service. Understand what they’re looking for and what’s important to them, but ultimately never sell directly to the consultant.
#3: Get to the true decision maker as soon as possible. Because the third-party buying consultant is never the true decision maker, your goal when dealing with those consultants is to as quickly as possible get to that true decision maker, to actually make the sale. This means trying to leverage a relationship with a third-party buying consultant to ultimately get that introduction to that true decision maker.
By implementing these three simple tips for dealing with third-party buying consultants to companies that you’re zeroing in on as prospects, you can make these opportunities much more fruitful and far less painful.
Please share below in the comments which of these tips is the most useful for you when dealing with a third-party buying consultant.
Marc Wayshak is a Motivational Sales Speaker, a Sales Keynote Speaker,
a Boston Motivational Speaker and a Sales Management Speaker
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