Episode #8 – Anwar Shafeeq and Khalil Alkhateeb

Sales has evolved far beyond pitching products and negotiating prices. Today, success is about solving real business problems and delivering long-term value. I sat down with Anwar Shafeeq and Khalil Alkhateeb, two seasoned ABB sales leaders, to explore how consultative selling transforms the customer relationship, especially when presenting ABB’s innovative One Care solutions. Their insights reveal actionable strategies anyone in B2B sales can use to build credibility, uncover deep customer needs, and foster lasting partnerships.

Anwar and Khalil draw on nearly four decades of combined global sales experience to share real-world insights and actionable tips, from uncovering hidden pain points to building long-term partnerships rooted in trust and value. We’ll dig into why consultative selling is critical in today’s competitive market, how it moves the conversation from just product features and price to real business outcomes, and the best practices for aligning ABB’s modular solutions to each customer’s strategic goals.

If you want to discover how top sales professionals at ABB change the perception of selling by putting customers first and delivering measurable business impact, this is the episode for you.

Outline of This Episode

• [00:00] Discussing measurable value and long-term partnerships.
• [06:26] Consultative selling: strategy over price.
• [09:16] Identifying and quantifying user pain.
• [10:46] Building consensus for solutions.
• [14:52] Tailored care for unique needs.
• [17:24] Translate value, involve & tailor.
• [22:22] Optimizing equipment lifespan efficiently.
• [23:49] How consultative discussions opened opportunities.

Moving Beyond the Transaction: The Power of Consultative Selling

Anwar Shafeeq kicks off the discussion by highlighting a fundamental shift in sales: it’s no longer about selling what you have, but helping customers achieve what they truly need. Consultative selling starts with understanding the customer’s business strategy, operational goals, decision-makers, and pain points. This means doing your homework, asking smart questions, and above all, listening actively.

ABB’s One Care isn’t just a service agreement. It’s a partnership model tailored for long-term collaboration. One Care ensures reliability, efficiency, and cost optimization, and the consultative sales approach allows ABB to directly link these outcomes to the customer’s business needs. Consultative selling builds trust, delivers real impact, and turns a one-off transaction into a long-term relationship.

Selling Solutions vs. Selling Products

Selling standalone products centers the sales conversation on features and price. When selling solutions like One Care, the focus shifts to outcomes, predictable uptime, risk reduction, and the ability to plan. Customers don’t just need components or repairs; they need lower risk and continuity. Here, the value comes from the relationship rather than the transaction. Khalil emphasizes the importance of mapping out the customer’s risks and operational objectives, ensuring the agreement addresses what truly matters to them.

Overcoming Challenges in Consultative Sales

Shifting from product-based to consultative solution selling is not without challenges. Anwar outlines three key hurdles sales professionals face:

• Building Business Acumen: Salespeople must have a deep understanding of how their solutions impact the customer’s broader business results.
• Patience with Longer Sales Cycles: Co-creating solutions can mean longer decision times, requiring patience and persistence.
• Articulating Value: It’s not enough to say a product is great; the connection between the solution and measurable business impact must be clear.
• Success in consultative selling means embracing these challenges and changing mindsets, focusing on trust, value, and relevance, rather than just achieving quick wins.

Uncovering Real Business Drivers

To make solutions like One Care truly relevant, Khalil emphasizes the need to help customers identify and quantify their pain points, sometimes even before customers realize these issues themselves. Sales professionals do this by asking impactful questions, such as, “Where does downtime hurt you the most?” and by mapping the “pain chain,” tying specific operational challenges to business-wide impacts.

This process builds consensus among stakeholders, ensuring that everyone involved recognizes both the need and the value of the solution.

Differentiating Solutions Through Value Articulation

Defining and communicating value is essential. As Khalil points out, competitors may offer similar services, but ABB sets itself apart by demonstrating what customers stand to gain and lose if they act or not. Simple ROI calculations (reduced shutdowns, extended asset life, lower ownership costs) are powerful, but pairing these with the “cost of inaction” makes the business case truly compelling.

Strategic Alignment and Ongoing Engagement

Aligning solutions with customer strategic goals and tailoring offerings like One Care to their specific priorities is critical for impact. As Anwar explains, One Care’s modular structure allows bespoke agreements that address individual customer goals, whether it’s cost optimization or energy efficiency.

But successful consultative selling doesn’t end at the sale. Ongoing engagement, co-creating solutions, and proactively addressing objections are vital for driving customer satisfaction and uncovering future opportunities.

Building Confidence and Partnerships

Khalil shares instances where ABB’s consultative approach resulted in not just a sale but the extension of a long-term partnership. Examples range from remote monitoring solutions reducing urgent callouts at peak production times to service agreements that optimized customer budgets, extending asset lifecycles without expensive capital outlay.

Sales is the art of selling confidence. ABB delivers peace of mind through expertise, reliable service, and a true understanding of the customer’s needs. The consultative strategies discussed by Anwar and Khalil show that when salespeople focus on understanding, co-creation, and value, they elevate their role to one that inspires pride and delivers measurable, lasting impact.

Connect with Anwar Shafeeq & Khalil Alkhateeb

• Anwar Shafeeq on LinkedIn 
• Khalil Alkhateeb on LinkedIn

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Learn More About Anwar Shafeeq & Khalil Alkhateeb

1. What was the pivotal moment in your career when you realized the power of consultative selling for solution-based offerings?

The pivotal moment came while I was working with a highly price-sensitive customer in the Middle East. Early on, discussions were always focused on price, which rarely led to a true win for either side. By shifting the focus to understanding the customer’s most intrinsic pains and leveraging our solutions to address them, we took the discussion onto a different value-driven mode, and price became just a component. 

These consultative discussions not only uncovered the solutions customers had been seeking for a long time but also deepened trust, elevated the relationship, and created a long-term strategic partnership.

2. Can you share an example where a consultative approach helped you close a OneCare deal or strengthen a customer relationship?

Most of our OneCare agreements are great examples of consultative selling. One notable case is a recent success by our colleagues in Belgium with a globally renowned chemicals customer. Initially, we were engaged through a standard maintenance agreement. Through ongoing and open dialogue, we uncovered significant operational challenges, particularly around turnaround time for drive testing. By collaborating closely with the Drives Service Workshop in Finland, we co-created a tailored OneCare package incorporating the Drives Module Exchange Concept, leveraging drive reconditioning and replacement rotation to deliver faster, more efficient outcomes.

The result was a five-year binding agreement that not only improved operational reliability, increased equipment availability, and provided clear cost predictability for the customer’s critical drives but also expanded the agreement’s scope and value while securing assured annual recurring revenue. This is a textbook example of how consultative selling transforms a standard service into a strategic, value-driven partnership.

3. What has been your biggest challenge in moving away from product-centric conversations toward selling complete solutions, and how did you overcome it?

The biggest challenge was shifting both the customer’s mindset and the sales approach. A shift from features and price to values and outcomes. It was not easy.

We started the change within us. We introduced a technique called Pain-and-Gain Workshop, also known as the Value Proposition Workshop. It was made mandatory to have this exercise for all potential service agreement customers. This structured approach enabled us to uncover all the customer pain points and link them to tangible business gains our solutions could deliver. 

Over time, it helped instill a culture of thorough discovery and preparation before even pitching the need for a service agreement. It ensured conversations are value-led and strategically aligned. This consultative approach also changed the customer’s mindset. They began to see us as expert consultants who deeply understood their problems and business, and who had the right solutions to address their challenges.

4. What are your top three habits, tools, or techniques for positioning complex service solutions like OneCare in a way that resonates with customers?

Consultative selling comes with a highly structured sales discipline. I give the utmost importance to the discovery phase. Using tools such as the Value Proposition Canvas and bringing colleagues together in a collaborative forum, we analyze the customer’s business, challenges, priorities, needs, and requirements in depth. This collective insight provides a strong foundation for shaping tailored solutions that truly resonate.

Secondly, quantification. It is very important. I always recommend translating technical benefits into financial and operational outcomes. If you can put the dollar values in front of the customer in terms of savings, cost of inaction, or ROI, you get a quick buy-in. Not the percentages but the absolute figures do the trick. You can use ROI models, cost-of-ownership analysis, and risk-reduction metrics to make the value tangible and boardroom-relevant.

Storytelling is a highly effective approach in consultative selling. Customers need proven results. They are often reluctant to be the first ones to try something new. If we can provide relevant references, success stories, or case studies that closely align with their situation, they can easily relate. This not only builds credibility but also instills confidence, significantly easing the decision-making process.

5. As customers demand more value and risk reduction, how do you see consultative selling evolving in the next few years?

For sustainable business growth, it is essential to embrace a consultative sales approach. In the coming years, consultative selling will evolve further into a true strategic partnership model. Customer expectations continue to rise, with increasing demand for measurable business outcomes and robust risk mitigation. Sales professionals will increasingly act as trusted advisors, leveraging advanced analytics, predictive insights, and co-creation workshops to design solutions tailored to each customer’s unique challenges. The focus will be on long-term value creation, where demonstrating ROI, operational reliability, and business impact becomes as critical as the technical solution itself.

6. What are some simple but often overlooked steps sales professionals can take to start selling OneCare more effectively today?

It starts with building a strong sales pipeline and working continuously on it, taking customers through different sales stages. It is a never-ending process. Maintaining a healthy sales pipeline ensures we exceed the targets.

Leveraging existing data is a critical success factor. We have powerful tools and platforms that provide detailed insights, including customer purchase history, trends, service records, service types, business potential, market share, and installed base details such as age and life cycle phase. Additionally, publicly available information about the customer’s business can be valuable. By analyzing and using this data intelligently, sales professionals can uncover meaningful discussion points, identify new opportunities, and position solutions more effectively.

Importantly, don’t start by selling. Focus first on understanding the customer’s needs and challenges. Once the value is clear, the solution naturally becomes relevant and compelling.

Prepare to handle objections: Anticipate potential concerns or pushbacks and address them early with data, examples, and alternative solutions. This reduces friction and strengthens the customer’s confidence in the proposal.