“Be more consultative.” you’re told – but what does that actually mean?
If you’ve heard those three words and nodded along without really knowing what to do next, you’re in good company. It’s possibly the most common piece of feedback given to B2B commercial professionals, and almost certainly the least well explained.
Managers say it. Recruiters put it in job specs. Senior leaders use it to explain why someone wasn’t quite right for a role. And the person on the receiving end is left to figure out what it means in practice, usually alone, usually by Googling something vague, and usually without a clear picture of what they’re actually supposed to change.
So let’s actually answer it. Not with a definition you’d find in a sales textbook, but with what it means in the room, in real conversations, with real customers.
Start with what it’s not
Being consultative is not about being nicer to customers. It’s not about asking more questions in a formulaic way, or listening with performative patience before delivering the same pitch you were going to give anyway.
It’s not a communication style. It’s not a set of techniques you layer on top of what you already do. And it’s definitely not something you can fake convincingly for long in front of a senior buyer who has been sold to hundreds of times.
The reason most explanations of consultative selling feel hollow is because they describe the surface behaviours (ask questions, listen actively, understand needs) without explaining what actually drives them. The behaviours are real. But they come from somewhere. And that’s what most definitions miss.
What it actually is: a different starting point
The most useful way I’ve found to explain it is this: consultative selling starts with a completely different question.
A transactional seller walks into a meeting, or picks up a phone, and the question in their head, consciously or not, is: “how do I move this person towards buying what I’m selling?” Every conversation is oriented around that outcome. The questioning, the listening, the rapport building, all of it is in service of the same destination.
A consultative seller walks into the same meeting with a different question: “what is actually happening in this person’s business, and does what I offer genuinely help with it?” That’s a fundamentally different orientation. It puts the customer’s situation at the centre rather than your product. And it changes everything that follows.
Here’s why that matters in practice. If your starting question is “how do I move them towards a sale,” your questions are designed to lead somewhere. You’re not really discovering, you’re steering. Experienced buyers feel this. They’ve sat through enough sales conversations to recognise when questions are tools of persuasion rather than genuine enquiry. They give shorter answers. They become guarded. The conversation stays on the surface.
If your starting question is “what is actually happening here,” your questions are genuinely exploratory. You might find out that what you’re selling isn’t the right fit, and say so. You might challenge something the customer believes that isn’t serving them well. You might surface a problem they hadn’t quite articulated yet. Buyers respond to this differently. They open up. The conversation goes deeper. And you become useful to them regardless of whether a deal happens.
Consultative selling isn’t a set of techniques you layer on top of what you already do. It’s a different starting point, and a different set of capabilities to get you there.
What it looks like on a Monday morning
Definitions are useful up to a point. What most people actually need is a picture of what this looks like in practice. So here are some concrete differences between transactional and consultative behaviour, not in theory, but in the kinds of situations you’re likely to face this week.
Before a customer meeting
A transactional seller prepares their pitch, the key features, the pricing structure, the objection responses. They might do a quick scan of the company website. They know what they want to present.
A consultative seller prepares their questions. They’ve researched the customer’s industry, what’s changing, what pressures businesses like this one are under, what’s likely keeping their contact up at night. They’ve thought about what they don’t yet know and how to find out. They go in curious, not armed.
In the discovery conversation
A transactional seller asks qualifying questions, budget, timeline, decision-maker, need. Useful information, but it’s about them, not the customer.
A consultative seller asks questions that help the customer think. “What does success look like for this project in twelve months?” “What’s the cost of not solving this?” “Who else in the business feels this problem differently?” These questions aren’t just gathering information, they’re helping the customer understand their own situation more clearly. That’s genuinely valuable, and it’s why consultative sellers are trusted rather than tolerated.
When the solution isn’t a good fit
A transactional seller finds a way to make it work anyway. They emphasise the features that align, play down the ones that don’t, and close the deal. Short-term win, long-term problem.
A consultative seller says so. They might say “I don’t think this is quite the right fit for what you’re describing, here’s why.” That honesty, in the short term, might cost a deal. In the long term, it builds the kind of reputation that generates referrals, repeat business, and access to senior people who only meet with people they trust.
Some of the capabilities behind the behaviours
This is where the “be more consultative” feedback breaks down in practice. It describes an output without addressing the inputs. Telling someone to ask better questions doesn’t make them better at it. Telling someone to build stronger executive relationships doesn’t give them the business acumen and credibility to do so.
The behaviours of a consultative seller rest on a range of capabilities that take time and targeted effort to develop. The full picture varies by role, an Account Manager, a Business Developer, and a Sales Engineer each need a different mix. But some of the capabilities that tend to show up most visibly in early consultative environments include:
Business acumen : genuinely understanding how your customer’s business works commercially, not just their industry in broad terms. What drives their revenue, what threatens their margins, what their board is measuring success against.
Discovery skill : the ability to ask questions that uncover root causes rather than surface symptoms, and to sit with the discomfort of not filling silence with your own voice.
Value case building : the confidence to talk about money, return on investment, and the financial cost of inaction. Many sellers find this uncomfortable. In consultative environments, it’s expected.
Presence with senior stakeholders : walking into a conversation with a CFO or Operations Director and being treated as a peer rather than a supplier. This comes from preparation, credibility, and the willingness to challenge as well as listen.
Long-term relationship orientation: the discipline not to sacrifice a relationship for a short-term gain. This isn’t just a value; it’s a commercial strategy. The most successful consultative sellers are trusted precisely because they’ve shown they’ll put the customer’s interest first, even when it’s inconvenient.
For a full overview of what consultative selling requires, see our complete guide
So why is “be more consultative” so unhelpful as feedback?
Because it doesn’t tell you which of these capabilities you’re actually missing. And the honest answer is that most people are missing different things.
There are more capabilities beyond these, and which ones matter most depends on your role. An Account Manager needs a different mix from a Business Developer. A Sales Engineer has different demands again. The point isn’t to memorise a list. It’s to understand that “be more consultative” points at a specific capability gap, and different people have different ones. Some have strong discovery skills but weak business acumen. Others have genuine commercial understanding but struggle with senior stakeholder presence. The gap varies. Which is why generic advice rarely lands.
The problem with generic feedback, and generic development, is that it doesn’t account for this. You can’t develop what you haven’t accurately diagnosed. You can self-diagnose honestly, and that’s a valuable starting point. But self-perception carries bias, often without you realising it. Validation from others adds accuracy to what self-reflection starts. The two together are significantly more reliable than either alone.
Research from Harvard Business Review consistently shows that only 10–15% of people are genuinely self-aware. The rest have a version of themselves that’s slightly off, usually in the direction of overconfidence on visible skills, and blind spots on the less visible ones. The gap between how you see yourself and how others experience you is exactly where the most important development opportunities live.
What to do with this
If you’ve been told to be more consultative, or if you already know you need to develop in this direction, the most useful thing you can do is get an accurate, honest picture of where you actually stand across the specific capabilities that consultative selling requires.
Not a self-assessment, which reflects your perception rather than your reality. Not a personality test, which tells you how you’re wired but not whether your skills are up to the job. A proper diagnostic that covers skills, motivation, personality, and, critically, how others actually experience you.
That’s the starting point. Not another course on consultative selling. Not another book. A clear picture of your specific gaps, so that whatever you do next is aimed at the right things.
So what does consultative selling means for you?
MyAcumen is a complete capability assessment built for B2B commercial professionals in consultative selling environments. It covers skills, motivation, personality, and 360° feedback, showing you not just what to develop, but why it’s been difficult so far.
→ Get your complete capability assessment here
→ Not sure yet? Start with a free 4-minute mini-assessment here