Episode #130: Product Knowledge In Sales

It is an obvious thing that we need good knowledge of our product to instill confidence in the buyer, underlining that we are a reliable partner. We need extensive product knowledge so that we can mentally sift the right solution for the buyer, from amongst the many possible alternatives which exist. Actually, we make the product purchase decision for the buyer. It may seem that the buyer is choosing, but in reality, the seller is choosing. This is based on what the client has told us about their situation and their needs. Salespeople who just launch willy nilly straight into their pitch get themselves into trouble. They can’t make a good decision about what the client needs, because they don’t know. They don’t have any information yet. They are using the “throw enough mud up against the wall and some of it will stick” process. Basically they are idiots.

As salespeople, we will always have a much more in depth knowledge of our product lineup than the buyer. This is obvious. We need to make the decision for the buyer and then lead them to arrive at an acknowledgment that our selection is the best one for their business.

To understand the buyer however, is not always so straightforward. They may be reluctant to share all their dirty laundary with a relative stranger, an outsider. They may not always have a clear idea themselves about what actually is the problem. In our own case, we deal a lot with HR Directors, who are looking for training on behalf of other divisions within the firm. This means we are often getting the information second hand, which can lead to gaps in understanding. Hard to hit a target which is vague.

The skill of the salesperson is to have experience with similar problems. To be able to offer solutions which have a track record of success. The grey areas for us are where we don’t have that much experience with a particular solution and we don’t know the solution in that much depth. Often salespeople have a very large catalogue of solutions and it is very difficult to know all of them thoroughly. Again using our own example. We have 155 modules from which to teach broken into two hour classes. It is basically impossible to hold 300 hours of that much detailed information in your brain.

Naturally there will be some solutions which are more called upon by clients than others, so we get to become more expert on these. The danger is we become too reliant on knowing the core products and don’t invest the time to know other solutions in the line up. This requires time to be allocated to study the full line up. Clients understand that we cannot be fully expert with every solution in a big catalogue, but they expect us to be able to find the information quickly. This means we need to have a system that allows us to plug in quickly to the product line-up in order to search for best solutions for the issue.

Fortunately in Japan, it is rare that we will ever get a deal done in one meeting. What usually takes place is we have the first meeting and collect information. We then go away, use that information and create a proposal on the solution we recommend. At the second meeting, we go through the details and convince the buyer that this is the best course of action. This allows us to comprehensively research our line up for the best offering to the client.

By consistently making time to study the lineup of solutions, we are better able to draw on the full resources of our company to help the buyer. In a busy world though, making that time is easier to imagine than to pull off. Nevertheless, we need to keep updating our knowledge of existing solutions and add in the new ones as they emerge.

One of the issues we should be careful of, is to also work on how to present the solution to the client. The product itself should be integrated into the sales training system, so that the sales training delivery is always in context.

Each solution in the product line up has its own benefits and we need to draw in the application of those benefits, the evidence of where this has worked before and then move smoothly into a trial close to see if we have fully dealt with any issues the client may still have. This means we need to devote time to studying the products in the context of how we will present the best solution to the buyer.