The Real Role of Product Knowledge
I thank Mrs. Menard. In Kindergarten, this sweet old lady taught me to read. In first grade, Mrs. Beach taught me to write (and let me use my left hand – quite a challenge in “those days”!). Thanks to the two of them, I got the basic foundation for my learning.
When I first got into this business, I was determined to learn everything I needed to know so that I could be a top producer. Quickly. I made sure that every evening I was reading some technical manual or another. I got hands on experience, I was lucky, my boss at the time thought that this was a valuable way to learn. I remember him telling me to think like the computer….and always have an engineer near by! Great piece of advise. I carry with me to this day. I also learned that I didn’t need to be the type of sales professional that solely relied on my own training to get the job done. I discovered, in short order, that there were loads of technical people out there who could speak “sales speak”. You know them. Quite likely, they’re in your own company. Use them! Use their skills and expertise. Bring into the sales cycle at the beginning…not when you’re trying to solve the problems of the western world because you misconfigured something! If your company offers product training, make the time to go. I’d bet that the person conducting the training is going to be a sales type person, and in the corner of the room, you’ll find his sales engineer, just waiting to jump into the conversation. It’s important to understand your product. It’s important to understand where it fits and what else you can add to your proposal to make it a complete offering. It’s equally as important to allow your engineering resources to be a part of the sales process. Typically, Engineers are a bit shy and not quite as “refined” as us sales types. Engage them in conversations with your customers (be sure to be a part of the conversation and to be able to redirect the conversation if need be!). When you’re listening to engineers speak to each other you’d be amazed at what you’ll learn! Learn something new every day. I do.
There are some wonderful websites out there that will teach you the basics, and beyond. Get onto their newsletter email blasts. Take the moment or two to read them. Displaying your product knowledge to your Customer is key to building your credibility and your success. Knowing how to present your technical expertise is yet another key. Your Customer doesn’t want to hear you spew a bunch of speeds and feeds. Your Customer is more interested in learning about how you’re going to solve his business problem. Learn to speak the technical speak so that anyone can understand it!
I’ve worked with a sales engineer who is gifted at presenting for many years. Tom can train a team of sales professionals on the latest products that his company offers and without fail, every time, the sales pros walk away understanding exactly what he’s just talked about. Tom speaks their language. He shows them where his products fit, he tells them the right questions of their customers to determine the need and the fit, and he speaks in a “non engineering” way so that we all get it.
The true role of product knowledge is knowing your resources. It’s also being able to describe the product so that the person you’re describing it to says “hey! Tell me more”. Get your customers interest in your product in a way that he’ll understand, and then let the engineers talk about speeds and feeds.
I conduct new hire training on a regular basis. I carry into every training session a plastic bag full of add on products and a cardboard box. The cardboard box is actually a mock up of one of the phone switches I offer my customers. In this training session, usually to new and very inexperienced sales people, I can show them, in terms that they can understand, how it all fits together. The cardboard box shows all the connections. The plastic bag has all the cables, key fobs and all the things that can connect to the box to make it work. I call it show and tell. The trainees call it easy to understand learning! They are learning with multiple senses. Not rocket science by any means, but they’re seeing it, they’re hearing and feeling it, and as a result, they’re gaining the knowledge that they need to offer to their customer. Using multiple senses to learning will help you to retain what you’ve learned.
When relating a product to a customer or prospect speak their language sounds simple enough but remember to be most effective you need to know what makes them tick, not so you manipulate their emotions and behavior because that doesn’t work and is how professional selling is done but by making sure everyone involved in the decision process understands how you are going to positively impact their life and make them look great! Finance measures things differently than sales and marketing, well we all love those happy creative people but they definitely march in time to their own rhythms.
There is more to knowing you product than knowing what the brochure and web site say, and while sales trainers every where will cringe there is so much more to knowing a product than what they think it will be bought and how they think to position it. Granted if you learn those things they will make you stringer than the average guy who doesn’t and most don’t but you need to understand the impact of what you sell on a customer and every part of the organization it touches. Part of product knowledge is understanding you own industry, identifying trends and innovation is as important as understanding obsolescence and decline. The next responsibility is to understand your customer’s industry, not as an expert but as student who is trying to complete an assignment, the assignment is of course to serve your customer. Tada the secret of the universe, knowledge and hard work, Shocking isn’t it?
Understanding and industry is a double edged sword. One side makes you powerful and effect and the other side well it’s not quite so positive and that is you might begin to compare your self against the industry and rather than striving to grow or change you might use it as a crutch during the hard times of to justify your own short falls. Well wake up great people never run at the average doesn’t matter what they do the great one beat the average and your challenge is to learn how to do that using your knowledge and being creative in what you position and where and how. Look at the companies who made wagon wheels, wooden round things with spokes that went on horse drawn carriages, once upon a time. Yep wagon wheels were big business back then, now they don’t need them nearly as much even in third world countries, How many went on to build rubber tires for cars? I don’t know it doesn’t matter all we need to know is if they didn’t change with the times and find new products and new customers for those products both old and new then they aren’t around anymore. They knew their products but were knowledgeable enough to change to survive as a company let alone be on the fore front to dominate the market share for those new products.
TIP: Don’t expect to know it all, but know the resources to get the answers that your Customers are asking. Make sure that you’ve got allies in other departments of your company so that when you have a question, you can get an answer quickly to relay that information to the Customer who is waiting for it. Don’t rely on email for the answer to a question….pick up the phone!
