Product knowledge is extremely important. Equally important, however, is what people do
with their product knowledge. Used at
the wrong time, in the wrong way, or at the wrong time, it can become a
detriment to making a sale. It's
innocent enough. You may say something
about an issue that's not directly related to the problem and suddenly
everything changes. It's not what you
know that's important. It's what you
do with what you know.
 I've
found that there are three stages of sales experience -- Novice, Amateur, and
Professional. The first stage, Novice,
is usually when someone first joins a company and doesn't really know anything,
or at least anything specific, about the company's products or services. They're excited about the opportunity and can't
wait to start making sales calls. They
may even start calling on existing customers and prospective customers alike.
Being a Novice doesn't mean the person is completely
inexperienced. It's just that this
particular environment is new to them.
It's sort of like being a rookie racecar driver at the Indianapolis 500. They may have been racing for 10 or even 15
years but never before at Indianapolis. In 1993, when Nigel Mansell, the Formula One
World Champion racing driver at the time, went to Indianapolis for the first time, he was
considered a rookie. If this is the
driver's first trip to the Indianapolis
500, no matter what their previous racing experience, they're considered a
rookie.
Selling is the same way.
A person could have prior sales experience, but until they received
their product training, they are still considered a novice. That doesn't mean that aren't
productive. Have you ever been in an
office where some new hire came on board and immediately started making
sales? You wonder to yourself, "how
come I didn't get that prime territory?" or "I've been calling on
that customer for years and they never bought from me!"
What usually happens is that the newly hired sales person
doesn't have a lot of information on their new product offering. Instead of going out and doing a lot of
presentations, they set up meetings with the decision-makers just to get the
ball rolling. Since they don't yet know
anything about the product, they start asking questions. Every time the decision-maker stops talking,
they simply ask another question. Sometimes,
they even take notes.
Because of their lack of specific product knowledge, these
new sales people spend about 75% of the time listening and only 25% of their
time talking. Most of their talking time
is spent asking questions with a little of it spent establishing rapport. They can't get hung up in product information
because they don't know anything. They
come out of the gate very fast and it appears a new superstar has arrived.
As good as
this person was without training, imagine how good they'll be when they get
trained. These folks now graduate from
being a Novice to becoming an Amateur. Sales
people spend a great deal of time and energy learning about their products. They hone their presentation skills. They've worked hard, practiced, and they're
proud of their knowledge. They can't
wait to get in front of a prospect -- it's so much fun to show people how much
we know.
The complexion of a sales call also starts to change at this
point. Where the listening ratio as a
Novice used to be 75:25, there's a complete reversal following product
training. The Amateur now spends 75% of
the time talking and only 25% of the time listening. After all, having spent as much time as they
did in learning the new information, it's only good if you find someone to tell
it to!
Each time a prospective customer asks a question, the
Amateur inundates them with all the information they have on the subject. We begin to notice that there are times when
a prospective customer sours during the sales cycle. When we first started talking to them, they
seemed to be excited about getting the product right away. After we told them all we knew, their
enthusiasm waned and they told us they wanted to "think it over."
What happened? Here
was someone who was excited about our product from the moment we met them. We gave one of our best sales presentations
and answered every question they asked.
Most sales people never get past this point. Once they learned it, they don't change
it. You can introduce new products and
they still focus on the old ones.
They're stuck in the middle at the Amateur Stage. If you ask them how many years experience
they have in sales, they will likely tell you some number of years. In reality, they have one year of experience many
times! There is a big difference.
Smart companies get their people beyond this point. They get to the Professional stage. It’s more than product training. It includes sales process and skill
development to refine and improve what the people do.
The difference is so subtle it's almost impossible to
distinguish except for the results. This stage requires the same degree of
product training the Amateur received.
They go back to asking questions.
Instead of the questions being haphazard as they were in the Novice
Stage, they now use their product knowledge as the basis for their questions. The Professional spends 25% of their time
talking and 75% of the time listening to what the prospective customer is telling
them. The Professional does on purpose
the same thing the Novice was doing by accident.
The greatness of a sales person is determined by the
questions they ask prospective customers… not the statements they make to
them! With training in the sales process,
product knowledge is used to guide prospective customers to discover the
solution to their problems. It's in
understanding the prospective customer's problem, not in convincing them that
you have the best product. That's the
sign of the true Professional.
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