Today Consultative Selling is almost a household word. It is an
approach to selling in which customer needs are used as the basis for the sales dialogue.
When the word consultative was applied to sales in the 1970's, it was revolutionary. It
marked a major transition from the salesperson as the purveyor of information and the
customer as the recipient to a much more collaborative interaction - one in which the
customer's needs, not the product - was the focal point of the sale. By the early 80's, the
term Consultative Selling began to be misunderstood as a long, arduous sales process that
focused on needs at the expense of closing business. By Linda Richardson, January 2008.
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