I read an article entitled, “Drive Sales With Product Knowledge.” It was a good article, actually covering a lot a great issues, but focused on the importance of having strong product/solution knowledge.
We know sales people have to be knowledgeable about our products and solutions, so I don’t disagree with the author’s premise.
It’s just that product knowledge is just table stakes, it is insufficient both in being competitive and in maximizing our value to customers.
Stated bluntly, customers don’t care about our products. Customers care about what they care about–it’s their own companies, jobs, opportunities, performance, and problems they face.
If we are to engage our customers in a meaningful way, if we are going to earn their investment in time with us, we need to focus on what they care about. The way we drive sales of our products and solutions is focusing on helping our customers identify and solve their own problems, or address their opportunities to grow.
As a result, understanding our customer, their markets, their customers, their competition is critical. Understanding what makes their businesses and them as individuals successful, how that success is measured is critical. Understanding the problems they have that we can solve, the opportunities they may be missing that we can help them claim is what catches their attentions and drives interest. Helping them learn how to improve, bringing sanity to their day to day lives is what they care about and how we can help/create value in simplifying and improving their business.
Ultimately, it’s what you know about your customers’ business and how you help them solve problems that drives sales.
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