Financial Consultant. Lives in £500k flat & drives new Audi... aged 22!!

Consultants are sales people, "people buy from people"... Hence consultative selling its in the job naming.

Pitching to people is selling to people in a consultative manor. Your selling a solution to a problem!

OK so you start with a false statement, then move swiftly to an unrelated quote, before throwing in an illogical comment as if it joins the two?



The actual definition of a consultant is "a person who provides expert advice professionally". Consultants aren't sales people, but senior members of consulting firms will pitch to win work, so you could say there's a sales element at a senior level. But that's the nature of any service, under your definition accountants, bankers and lawyers are all sales people?

I agree that the role in this article sounds like it is just a glorified sales role, but don't chuck every consultant in with that. I'm not a consultant by the way if you were wondering

They charge for a "value added service", whether its 10%/20% they are sales people, even with regulated roles your giving advice on the basis of charging them fees. If you think they aren't sales people why did things like RDR come into place then. There offering a consultative service, its called solution based selling. All these people you listed have regulated roles and code to which they have to abide with or get struck off.

Yes... how does that make it a sales role? I think you're confusing someone who's services are sold (practically everyone? the basis of employment?) with a sales role. These are not the same thing, surely you see that?

From a google of RDR, it seems to be relevant the financial advisor's and commission based selling, e.g. sales role. Consultants are not commission based (some glorified sales roles might steal the title as mentioned previously, that's just labelling) - this just isn't relevant. Did you think I was talking about commission based roles? Like "sales consultants", "recruitment consultants" and "beauty consultants" etc? In my eyes those are sales roles using the word "consultant" to attempt to sound professional - those aren't real consultants (or certainly not the kind I'm talking about, down to opinion I guess).

Anyway, I'm not going to have a full on debate with you, if you want to believe it then go right ahead.

I have to say I agree, I thought a consultant was a person who, through years of experience, provides advice to companies in order for them to achieve or improve. For example, a consultant may use their years of management experience and knowledge to go into a company and streamline the management team and structure. Or someone who used to work for HMRC could work with a company as a consultant to provide specialist tax advice.

Apart from retail stores which call their sales staff 'Sales consultant' as you said.

Yeah your offering a consultative service, meaning your charging for your advice. But in order to gain and retain that business you have to pitch to the key decision maker and influencers in the organisation to implement change. So you do go through the whole sales process, i.e. Objection handling/ proposals.. Etc. To even get an SLA through the door, its a sales process.

I have to say I agree, I thought a consultant was a person who, through years of experience, provides advice to companies in order for them to achieve or improve. For example, a consultant may use their years of management experience and knowledge to go into a company and streamline the management team and structure. Or someone who used to work for HMRC could work with a company as a consultant to provide specialist tax advice.

Apart from retail stores which call their sales staff 'Sales consultant' as you said.

A consultant is someone providing skills to a company that they don't already have in-house. That's about it. That's probably either because said skills are too specialist or the need for them is too short in duration to justify a permanent employee. You don't have to have years of experience, you just need a skill that the company needs and doesn't have already.