What Salespeople Need To Know, But Don't
Building a comprehensive and relevant learning curriculum for B2B salespeople is always a challenge. On the list are many basic and advanced selling skills, product knowledge, industry knowledge, competitive knowledge, company (back office, for example) knowledge, research approaches, technology skills (using CRM, for example), and more.
Most companies that we’ve worked and many more that we’ve surveyed are missing an important component in their training mix: business knowledge. There are plenty of reasons not to focus on this. A big one is cost (travel, opportunity, vendor, licensing, etc.). Few full-service sales training providers offer business knowledge as part of their offering. Many of the rest are reluctant to allow niche players in their accounts because it reduces revenue derived from their engagement with the client. Often sales leadership doesn’t see the importance or have an appropriate level of business knowledge themselves, so the subject never comes up.
None of this is good because it leaves the B2B salesperson at a loss. They can’t build credibility with the business managers they’re supposed to be selling to. They can’t show how their products will contribute to the customer making their financial plan. They can’t provide the customer’s financial people with the assumptions required to build a business case or ROI.
I decided to re-release a podcast I had previously recorded with president Mike Rohan and executive instructor Bob James from Executive Conversation. Originally I was excited at the aspect of doing the podcast. I knew the folks from Executive Conversation going back to the mid-90′s. We’ve had joint clients and they always did a fine job. When I listened to the podcast again recently, I was reminded of what a terrific job Mike and Bob did. This podcast is one that every sales leader should hear.
Executive Conversation says there are five competencies required for B2B selling that are under-appreciated and under-leveraged:
- Business Knowledge. The ability to understand a customer’s business model and effectively interpret the macro economic factors impacting their performance.
- Customer Insight. The ability to gain the account insight required to identify new opportunities and to credibly engage around a customer’s strategic initiatives.
- Financial Acumen. The ability to interpret financial trends and analyze customer financial performance to pinpoint areas of need.
- Return On Investment. The ability to credibly quantify the financial impact of investing in your solutions using metrics meaningful to the customer.
- Executive Engagement. The ability to credibly engage, build relationships and sell at executive levels within customers.
If you’re interested in seeing how fluent you are in these areas, you might take Executive Conversation’s quick test.
Many of you are going to read this post and think, “My salespeople don’t need this level of knowledge about the business aspects of our customers and clients.” You know what? You’re probably wrong.
Photo credit: © Sapsiwai – Fotolia.com
Filed under: sales training, Sales Training Companies
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Dave,
In complete agreement. Thankfully, today’s technology can help gather the knowledge without a big time investment. The main excuse for not being educated (“I don’t have time”) is now gone. Hence, I see buyers/executives being less and less interested in talking to uneducated sales people, and respond to unresearched cold calls.
Good comment, Umberto. Thanks.
While Umberto is correct, gathering information is easier than ever thanks in part to programs like InsideView, its not sufficient to lift the entire sales profession.
I believe that lift will come when CRM vendors deliver sales environments that actually help sales people sell; in short do for sales people what AutoCAD does for designers and architects and PhotoShop does for photographers.
Both AutoCAD and Photoshop leverage technology to enhance the education, experience and natural talents of their respective user communities. If all AutoCAD or PhotShop did for their customer base is RECORD actions taken, both vendors would be out of business yesterday.
Sales software needs to learn that lesson. Simply RECORDING activities taken just doesn’t cut it. The sales profession needs sales solutions that takes all the information dished up by a service like InsideView and helps the AE find, qualify, develop and close the opportunity.
The CRM paradigm is shifting.
Ken Knickerbocker
http://www.crmparadigmshift.com
As long as hiring managers believe that selling is about product knowledge, features and benefits, this situation will prevail.
I agree with this post 100%, Dave. I recently recorded an excellent podcast with John Keenan former VP of Global Accounts for Oracle and current board member of several software firms.
John described how poorly software firms prepare salespeople for battle. It’s like dropping a US soldier in Afghanistan with a knife to battle the Taliban. The US Army does not do this and company leaders should not either.
Another key point was establishing a reason for meeting. Most companies do loss analysis and want to know why they buy. But salespeople need to give prospects a good reason to meet. No qualified prospect — no deal.
I agree with you as well Dave. What happens is that companies just focus on one thing…numbers, so unless they have a sales force out there to bring those numbers in, those numbers won’t be happening. Hence, the sales training gets sacrificed. Many firms also think that sales is a “hands on” training and just throw their sales people to the water just to see who survives. Those who survive are the ones who “wanted it bad enough”. Like shooting their foot. Thanks for an educative blog.
[...] about important sales techniques and knowledge that some salespeople may not be considering. In a recent article on his Web site, Stein revisits a podcast he did with sales training company Executive [...]