Question

Pretend that you are the Director of Sales and Marketing at the vacation resort of BEACHES Negril. Your task involves developing a product-selling and customer strategy that will convince Johnson & Johnson to choose your destination for their annual meeting. Please note that your purpose is not to “sell” the resort, but rather discuss your strategy for convincing J&J to choose your resort as their destination for their annual meeting.

Question: Referring to the consultative sales approach, discuss which model (i.e. spin selling, personal selling, or Socratic) you would use to discover the needs of your target audience (i.e. J&J)

Answer 1

Consultative selling is a type of need-based sales approach that focuses on building a relationship with the customer, understanding their problems, and developing solutions to their challenges through open-ended questions and active listening.

In order to understand the needs of the target audience (J&J), I would use the Socratic sales approach because this approach allows us to ask a series of easily answered questions to the customer and then little by little few questions can be asked that help us to identify the customer's priorities and needs. Asking such open-ended questions encourages the customer to think out loud, examine the implications of his conclusions, and continue to provide useful information and once after taking the customer into confidence, I can easily pitch my solution meeting all the customer needs with all the benefits of the resort as a suitable destination for their annual meeting.