Know Your Widget

The two major elements of a successful sales career are: 1) selling skill and 2) product knowledge. A gap in either one will cause sales to stay at the same level or drop. When the two elements of skill and product knowledge work in tandem, a rep’s sales will grow and so will the company’s profits. Feet on the street are fine, but when a rep is in front of a prospect, skill and knowledge meet their biggest test. At the end of the fiscal year, if sales are flagging, there may be a knowledge gap somewhere.

“Clearly product knowledge is the foundation for selling,” says Linda Richardson, founder, president, and CEO of Richardson, a leading global firm providing customized sales training, e-learning, and consulting. “The majority of companies provide their sales team with product knowledge training. However, many of them fail to integrate it with sales training. Product training alone is not sufficient; it has to be usable, accessible, and salesperson-friendly.”

Product knowledge is often presented from a technical, product, and organization-focused perspective. While this is all well and good, Richardson says that companies need to enhance that product knowledge by making it client-focused and sales-oriented, too. Training should go beyond the features, benefits, target market, and how the product works. It should also include client needs, questions to ask the client, success stories, anticipated objections and how to respond to them, the competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, and product differentiation.

“Generally you don’t see that dimension of product knowledge training,” says Richardson, who is the author of The Sales Success Handbook (McGraw-Hill, 2003). She compares successful product knowledge training to a pop-up book. “All the information is two-dimensional and then it becomes three-dimensional when it pops up. When you integrate product knowledge into sales training, it actually ‘pops up’ for salespeople because it’s completely in context. They’ll see how to use it.”

The Merits of Training

The best training encompasses all learning styles and involves multiple senses. One way to provide sales-oriented product training is through interactive sales meetings that involve role-playing. Another is through Web-based, e-learning programs. There are advantages to both.

One advantage to Web-based training is that companies can update product information frequently, so sales teams can have the information at their fingertips when they need it. Another advantage is that they can access the Web when it’s convenient for them.

Web-based learning can take many forms such as PowerPoint presentations or interactive programs, says Richardson, whose company provides both. Richardson’s interactive programs allow participants to take a 20-minute course that allows them to apply the product knowledge in a sales scenario and take a test. A bonus: They are provided with a personal action plan based on their test results.

Some interactive products, such as one from Enspire Learning, can be customized to fit a company’s needs, but don’t have to be developed from scratch, says co-founder and CEO Bjorn Billhardt. They are more reasonable in cost.

“With our simulated program, clients can easily train their sales professionals about new products and integrate it with general sales training in a very engaging online environment,” says Billhardt, whose clients include Harvard Business School, United Technologies, Pitney Bowes, SAP, Capital One, and Canon. “Sales team members are even able to compete with one another in a virtual sales situation where they learn about the product features and benefits and how to interact with customers about those products.”

Enspire’s sales simulator is intended to mimic real-life, one-on-one sales experiences. The customer speaks directly to the salesperson and gives the salesperson a text prompt. The salesperson selects from a multiple choice answer and the way the salesperson answers dictates the way the simulated customer responds. At the end of the simulation, salespeople are taken to a mentor character who gives them feedback on their sales performance.

“Sales professionals often skim through training material,” explains Shon Bayer, vice president of marketing for Enspire. “Therefore the material needs to grab their interest and answer the question, ‘What’s in it for me?’ You really need to look at the motivational strategies that will keep salespeople engaged. Competition – being benchmarked against peers – is an incredibly powerful motivator in sales training. Our simulation lets them compete with their teammates in a safe environment. In real life, your sales force doesn’t get second chances. This type of learning enables the salesperson to try out new techniques and test the depth of their knowledge where they don’t have money or their jobs on the line.”

“It allows them to increase win rates, make mistakes, and receive feedback on virtual customers so they will be more effective in front of real ones,” adds Bayer. “It can also improve the effectiveness and product knowledge of your entire team because you can track both individual and team performance.”

The Human Touch

While e-learning is great, don’t forget that salespeople need the human touch, too, says Dave Anderson, a global sales consultant and author of If You Don’t Make Waves You’ll Drown (Wiley Press, 2005). According to him, role-playing has some advantages over e-learning.

“Simulations seem very effective to sharpen reflexes and practice,” says Anderson. “However, you can’t totally automate the product-learning process and appeal to everyone’s learning style so you need to incorporate hands-on product training meetings with managers. They still need to interface with their sales team and get their feedback. Role-playing during a meeting allows you to do that and offers the team a chance to ask questions and get answers on the spot.

“That being said, I think e-learning will become a bigger and bigger part of how we get information to our people,” he adds. The face-to-face meetings can be a way for sales managers to bring it all together.”

“Sales meetings are a terrific venue for sharing product knowledge,” agrees Richardson. “However, sales seminars are just the beginning of the process. Then the daily hard work begins: The sales manager needs to reinforce this knowledge by making that product knowledge available outside of the workshops via videotape, audiotape, or online. Managers need to integrate it into their coaching on a daily basis and there needs to be a Web-based tool that salespeople can go to when they need to refresh.”

The Knowledge Dump

Once salespeople learn everything they can about products, they must also learn to present that knowledge selectively, says Anderson. “If salespeople don’t know how to present their product knowledge intelligently to each client, it can nullify good product training,” he says. “Salespeople should learn everything they can about the product because different customers have different needs. However, they should find out what each customer’s hot buttons are and then present the product information that meets that client’s individual needs.”

Richardson agrees: “This is something we really drive home in our training,” she says. “The biggest problem that we see is that salespeople tend to misuse their product knowledge – they use the knowledge too soon and use it in a way that’s not clear to the clients. We suggest sales managers coach their salespeople before they make the sales calls. Ask them: ‘What are your objectives on this call? What questions are you going to ask your client? When are you going to ask those questions?’ Tell them to get all this information before they address their product so they can tailor their product features to their clients’ needs. Then the sales managers need to do some live coaching with their team and observe how they’re using their product knowledge.”

“If you think that covering your bases by presenting everything you know about the product doesn’t hurt anything, you’re wrong,” adds Anderson. “You take steps backward when you talk about things that the customer is not interested in hearing. You can overwhelm them and push them further away from the sale.

“It’s great to be enthused, but don’t just pour the information over everyone’s head,” Anderson explains. “When you go on endlessly about features the customer doesn’t care about, you raise the price of the product because they might be thinking, ‘Well, I really don’t need all of that.’ However, when you customize the product details and present them so that they connect with a prospect’s hot buttons it raises the value of your product.”

Anderson recommends that salespeople build mental images in the customer’s mind. For example, people don’t buy an ergonomically correct machine part; they buy something that will reduce employee absenteeism and worker’s compensation costs.

“It’s basic Sales 101,” says Anderson: “Learn everything possible about your product but present it judiciously. Remember the 80/20 rule as it applies here – 20 percent of the features are all the customer really cares about so spend 80 percent of the time talking about that 20 percent. Know your product well enough so that no matter what the customer’s needs are, you can tailor the product benefits to fit your customer.

“You misuse product knowledge when you forget that most prospects still buy people first,” adds Anderson. “All the product knowledge in the world won’t bail you out of a situation where the customer doesn’t like, trust, or believe you.”

And that’s a whole other subject.