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Selling B2B is “consultative,” but there's a point where you need to turn the meter on.

The concept of “consultative” selling is that the sales professional should be adding value from the very start of the customer relationship. However, if that concept is taken too literally, you can end up providing free services to a prospect that never intends to buy.

This is particularly true when small companies are selling to large companies. People inside large companies often have only the vaguest notion of how businesses work. They think that budget dollars fall magically down the management chain and that everybody gets paid, whether work gets done or not.

When sales professionals from small companies sell to such behemoths, they're often asked to spend an enormous amount of time and effort to develop the customer relationship. In the worst cases, they're asked to provide entirely free services, even when the behemoth has no real intention of buying.

In fact, cynical corporate bureaucrats actually consider free labor from hopeful sales professionals as a viable cost-savings measure.