During my career I have worked with thousands of talented sales professionals. Surprisingly though very few have displayed excellent preparation and research skills. Why is this? Is it because we live in a world where more and more people grave instantaneous success but lack patience or dedication to do proper preparation? For many sales professionals preparation and research can to often be considered a chore or even boring. The truth it is time consuming and can be boring but is a necessary part of the sales process which cannot be ignored or over looked.
In simple terms preparation and research are the “Foundations for your Future Success”. Would you build a house without adequate foundations? Of course you can but you wouldn’t be surprised if it collapsed during a storm would you? Why then would you cut corners with preparation and research and still expect to be successful?
To start with whatever your product, ensure you are properly briefed by your Production Team. Prospects need to know you have the competence to guide, direct, recommend, or select the best option for them, regarding your product or service. Above all product knowledge is a vital sales requirement if you are to compete successfully and acquire satisfied customers.
There are a number of things you need to know from a product knowledge standpoint, such as:
• What your products or services do.
• What they cannot do.
• What your Unique Selling Proposition is.
• What your competitor’s products or services can and cannot do.
• What your competitor’s Unique Selling Propositions are.
• How other customers have uniquely used your products or services to improve their business.
• If applicable how your prospects have uniquely used your competitor’s products or services.
• Trends in the marketplace that may impact your sales and customer perceptions.
It’s vital to know everything you need to know, and what your prospects need you to know, so you can address their needs, questions, challenges, dissatisfactions, or issues. “Winging it” with regard to product knowledge is not an advisable strategy.
The strategy of “fake it until you make it” simply won’t work in today’s complex and fast moving world.
This is especially true when you’re dealing with complex products and services with knowledgeable and sophisticated buyers. The bottom line is fake product knowledge at your peril.
Learn everything you need to know as quickly as you can. Remember product knowledge doesn’t make up for poor people skills, poor selling skills, or poor attitude, but, if you are able to master all four, there will be little you can’t achieve.
From experience the top ten percent of sales professionals are also excellent researchers. They plan their calls so they are clear in advance about what they want to achieve. They also know as much as possible about the prospect and their market.
Put yourself in a prospects position, would you be irritated if you were asked: ‘So how’s business? A sales professional should know how their prospects business is doing. It’s your job to bring them something that they do not know, or add something valuable to their business. I refer to this information as “ The Angle”. Would you go fishing without a hook or a net? No, of course not, so don’t pick up the phone without an Angle!
Today we have great tools to help us with research. Technology provides us with access to so much information about prospects, and much of it can be accessed on line. You can research using:
- Your internal databases and CRM systems
- Search engines like Google
- Clients web sites
- Competitor web sites
- Industry web sites
- Online publications
Using these tools, we can not only find out about our prospects company and industry, we can also build a profile of our contact. This gives us a base to start a business relationship and help us truly understand our clients. They expect it – and remember they will probably look you up as well.
Of course you need to be able to use this information along with great questions to understand their business problems and needs, but that’s another challenge. Research is the key: the better prepared you are, the more chance a customer will open up to you.