Most B2B salespeople, if asked, would say yes. They build relationships. They listen to customers. They try to understand the need before pitching a solution. That sounds consultative.
But the definition of consultative selling isn’t about good intentions. It’s about what actually happens in the conversation. And there’s often a meaningful gap between the two.
Why this question is harder to answer than it looks
Self-reflection is a reasonable starting point, but it has a well-documented problem. We tend to view our own behaviour against what we intended to do, not what we actually did.
You intended to do genuine discovery. You asked several open questions. But did you explore the commercial reality behind the problem, or did you confirm what you already assumed? You intended to build a value case. You talked about ROI. But did the customer leave with a clearer understanding of what staying where they are was costing them, or did they just hear another pitch?
These distinctions are hard to see from inside the conversation. And without honest feedback from outside, most people assume they’re doing better than the evidence would suggest.
Some honest indicators to consider
These aren’t a formal assessment. They’re questions worth sitting with honestly.
1. In your discovery conversations
Do you arrive at customer meetings having researched their business, not just their job title and company name, but their commercial model, their recent challenges, and what their industry is going through?
When a customer describes a problem, do you dig into the financial reality behind it, what it’s actually costing them, what solving it would be worth, or do you move relatively quickly to talking about solutions?
After a discovery conversation, could you write down three things you learned about that customer’s business that you didn’t know beforehand? Or did the conversation mostly confirm what you already expected?
2. In how buyers respond to you
Do senior stakeholders want to meet with you, not just your main contact, but the people who actually make decisions? Or do you find access to senior buyers difficult to get and harder to hold?
When you’re in a meeting with a senior buyer, does the conversation feel like a peer-level discussion about their business, or does it feel like you’re presenting at them?
Do customers come back to you for advice on things beyond the immediate deal, or is your relationship with them primarily transactional, defined by the current contract?
3. In how you manage the sales cycle
When a deal stalls, do you understand specifically why, what’s happening internally for the customer, which stakeholders are uncertain, and what would need to change for it to progress? Or do you find that deals go quiet and you’re not entirely sure what’s happening on the other side?
When there’s pressure to close at the end of a quarter, do you sometimes push for commitments that the customer isn’t quite ready to make? And if so, how does that affect the relationship afterwards?
What the honest answer usually looks like
Most people who work through questions like these find that they’re consultative in some areas and less so in others.
They might be strong at building relationships and trust, but weaker at the commercial conversations that consultative selling requires. They might be good at discovery with the contacts they know well, but less effective at building relationships with the senior stakeholders they haven’t met yet. They might have strong commercial instincts, but limited self-awareness about how they come across under pressure.
This is normal. Consultative selling requires a combination of capabilities that most people develop unevenly. The question isn’t whether you’re a consultative seller or not. It’s where specifically your strengths lie and where the gaps are.
Knowing the answer to that with any precision is hard to do on your own.
Why self-reflection only gets you so far
Reflecting honestly on your own behaviour is valuable. But there are limits to what self-reflection can reveal.
You can’t easily see how buyers experience you, whether your discovery questions land as genuinely curious or subtly leading. You can’t see the gap between your intent and your impact in a difficult conversation. You can’t see your own blind spots, by definition.
The picture that’s most useful for development combines several things: an honest assessment of your skills across the specific competencies that consultative selling demands, an understanding of what motivates you and whether your current environment is aligned with that, an awareness of how your natural style affects the way buyers experience you, and feedback from the people who actually work with you.
Each of those gives you something different. Together, they give you the kind of clarity that makes development targeted rather than generic.
How to actually become a consultative seller
Knowing you have a gap is the starting point. Closing it is a different challenge, and one that most development approaches handle badly.
The standard route is to find a course or a book, absorb the content, and try to apply it. This rarely produces lasting change, not because the content is poor, but because it skips the most important step: knowing specifically which behaviours need to change in your case before you start.
Two salespeople can both need to improve their discovery. One talks too much because they’re uncomfortable with silence. The other asks questions but doesn’t really listen to the answers. The same training won’t fix both. Without a specific focus, effort gets spread across everything and changes nothing decisively.
The sequence that actually works looks like this.
1. Start with an accurate picture, not an opinion
Before you can develop deliberately, you need to know where you actually are. Not at the level of “I’m pretty good with people but my commercial conversations could be stronger.” At the level of specific competencies, measured honestly, with input from people who see you in action.
That means combining a structured skills assessment with an honest look at what motivates you, how your natural personality style shapes the way buyers experience you, and what the people around you actually observe. Each piece adds something. The skills assessment tells you what. The motivator picture tells you why some areas feel easy and others feel like hard work. The style profile tells you how you land with others. The 360 feedback tells you what you can’t see yourself.
Together, they give you a specific, honest starting point rather than a vague sense of direction.
More on different assessment options available in the market today
2. Focus on one or two things at a time
Consultative selling involves a lot of capabilities. The temptation after an honest assessment is to try to work on everything. That doesn’t work.
Behaviour change requires focused, deliberate practice of specific things, repeated over time until the new habit replaces the old one. Pick the one or two areas that will make the biggest difference in the deals you’re actually working on right now. Work on those. Let the rest wait.
This feels slow. It isn’t. Targeted development on the right two things moves faster than scattered effort across ten.
3. Practice in real conversations, not in preparation
You can’t develop consultative selling skills by thinking about them. You develop them by using them in real customer conversations, reflecting honestly on what happened, and adjusting.
That means preparing a specific question or approach before each meeting, not a full script, just one thing you’re going to try differently. After the meeting, write down what happened. Did it land the way you intended? What would you do differently? That cycle of intention, action, and reflection is where capability actually builds.
4. Get honest feedback, not reassurance
The hardest part of this journey is staying honest about your own progress. Most salespeople, when they try something new and it doesn’t go perfectly, conclude that the approach doesn’t work rather than that they need more practice.
Feedback from someone who knows your development focus and can observe you in action, whether a manager, a coach, or a trusted peer, makes an enormous difference. It keeps the focus specific and stops old habits quietly reasserting themselves.
If you’ve been asking yourself whether you’re as consultative as you think, and what to do if you’re not, using a MyAcumen assessment is a useful place to start.
Or start with something free: take a free mini-assessment →
Related reading:
- What is consultative selling? Complete guide
- Consultative selling skills: what they really are
- From transactional to consultative selling
- Consultative selling training: why most of it doesn’t work
