When It Comes to Sales, Knowledge is Overrated

Have you ever gone into a meeting with a salesperson and walked out overwhelmed and exhausted?

It’s happened to all of us at one time or another.

Sales folk usually know their stuff inside out. But as a potential client, do I need to know everything they know?

The answer is simple: “No, I don’t.”

As a customer, I want to know how your solution impacts me. I don’t need to know everything about your company, product range, and what your other customers are doing. I want to understand if you can solve my problem or not, and if you can, how long will it take and how much will it cost.

High-performing sales people combine what they know with skill and discipline to increase their effectiveness, carefully choosing what to say and when to say it.  Let’s illustrate the process.

Knowledge
Competent salespeople understand both their own company and its offerings and the business challenges and market characteristics of their target clients, e.g., strengths, weaknesses, competition, and trends. Gathering and synthesizing market intelligence helps ensure productive conversations with clients, aligning problems and challenges with potential solutions, and developing an action plan for moving forward.

But before picking up the phone or walking into a sales call, there are other things a sales rep needs to know about the stakeholder, their company, and the deal on the table:

• The background of the person they’re meeting (Hint: Use LinkedIn or Zoom Info)
• Key metrics he/she is most likely being measured against based on the customer persona
• Recent news about the company,e.g., deals announced, personnel movements, or investments
• The solution within the portfolio that best matches the company’s challenge and stakeholder metrics
• Solution pricing and implementation details and time frames

Armed with relevant, up-to-date information, you’re now in a position to utilize your knowledge and apply your sales skills.

Skills
Every sales professional’s goal is to provide solutions that address each client’s needs and expectations. But that requires more than having a thorough of their challenges and objectives and presenting your products or services.

To be effective, you need to develop a set of essential interpersonal skills. These include being adaptable, skillfully combining discovery and impact questions with storytelling to create alignment, and thinking out of the box when put on the spot. You may also need to read between the lines (i.e., what isn’t the client saying), adjust to stakeholder body language, and overcome objections and potential show-stoppers.

But there’s a caveat.

You can’t learn these skills online or in a classroom. The only way to acquire them is through repeated practice, effort, and feedback. If you don’t practice, you won’t get the feedback you need to hone those skills and take them to the next level. And never think to yourself, “I’ve got this.” Those words imply that your leaning on old skills and experiences that may not work in new, evolving sales situations. Go into every new opportunity with your eyes open, confident that you can seal the deal but ready to learn new things and practice discipline.

Discipline
An essential component of every sales cycle involves taking the steps necessary to create or strengthen lasting relationships with new or existing clients. Doing so encompasses establishing rapport, communicating using various channels, and conducting productive meetings.Doing so takes both skill and discipline.

Discipline means making conscious choices regarding what to do and when to do it. You may have both the knowledge and the skill to do something, but timing can mean the difference between success and failure. For example, should you talk or listen, discuss benefits or pricing, let the meeting meander or rein it in, respond to an objection or stick to the subject? All of these are within your control, but choosing the right time takes discipline.

Discipline—like skill—takes practice. When you have the knowledge and a list of skills to choose from, discipline yourself to use a combination of them at the right time to maximize the impact.

The Bottom Line

Over reliance on knowledge is a trap. It’s easier to talk yourself out of a deal than it is to talk yourself into one—just talk too much. High-performance sales teams build their skills and discipline through a continuous cycle of practice, feedback, and implementation. When a sale stalls during negotiations, it’s often an indication that skills and discipline were lacking in earlier stages of the sales cycle. Understanding what skills to develop and when to use them will help you navigate this critical juncture in the sales cycle.

About Jeev

A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.