Sales is a Knowledge Game...Are your Reps in the Know?
Posted on September 09, 2015 by Mark Rye, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.
The sales process is getting tougher. Prospects just aren’t as easy to work with as they used to be, and even the hardest working sales reps struggle
For anyone with a career in sales, sales management or running a business you have likely noticed a trend. The sales process is getting tougher. Prospects just aren’t as easy to work with as they used to be, and even the hardest working sales reps struggle to consistently close business. There may be many factors influencing this trend, but most likely access to information is playing a role in your sales process.
In sales, knowledge is power. The more knowledge you bring to the table, the more value you can offer your prospects. And this value is directly related to the influence you will have over whether a prospect will buy your product, when, and for how much. We expect sales professionals to influence accounts in a manner that leads to sales revenue, but are they really in the position to do so?
Consider for a moment how complex it was for a phone company to design, manufacture and sell a telephone 20 years ago. Now consider what would be involved in designing, manufacturing and selling a modern day smart phone. The depth of the subject matter has grown immensely over this time. Now think of your business, even the simplest products result in deep subject matter expertise being developed by your company. Information that when properly presented can make a clear case as to why you are the best provider for a particular opportunity. However, this subject matter expertise has proven very difficult to consistently pass through to the Sales Team.
The other major shift we have seen in the past decade or two is the amount of information that prospects and clients have access to. At one point (before the web, social media, online reviews and analyst reports) you were their primary source of information regarding solutions. They came to you for solutions and you leveraged that knowledge to influence the buying process. Now, clients can spend months researching solutions, vendors, regulations and implementation approaches. This information can grind sales processes to a halt and delay decisions indefinitely.
Is there any doubt that Sales Reps struggle to hit quota when they are being sandwiched by these two walls of information?
The good news is you likely have the formula for success in this new sales environment already, you just need to connect the pieces in a new way. For example you likely have:
• Product Management that understand every aspect of your products and how they solve customers’ problems
• Service Delivery that knows the pros and cons of every implementation scenario
• Marketing Professionals that understand the industry and competitive landscape
• Technical Sales Reps (Engineers, Solutions Consultants, etc) who can demonstrate your products capabilities and create excitement about the functionality provided
• Sales Reps that know their customers, their customers’ needs, how to open doors and who keep their ears to the ground for the latest news and trends
• Sales Management that is constantly assessing sales strategy and maximizing opportunities
Together this team is an unstoppable force. That is, if they work together to close business.
Too often this sales collaboration only takes place once per year when a sales “Dream Team” is assembled to go after the biggest deal around. These resources can work seamlessly to blow away prospects and bring in the big deals (often at a cost, or many costs, both tangible and intangible) when deployed. So, the question we need to ask is how these players can work seamlessly together every day. Enabling this collaboration may be the key to winning in this knowledge based sales environment.
