Sales training: What do we really need to know about our products?

Posted on June 20, 2008 by Karl Goldfield.
Categories: Sales Training.

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In every company there is that relatively successful sales rep that people joke knows nothing about their product. The people laughing are really confused since this person does not understand the inner workings of feature A and function B. However, if this person is a real sales person, when they tout ignorance, the comics are dead wrong. The person may not have a technical understanding of the product, but what they must possess to be successful in sales is a clear understanding of how their product make a difference in the users life and why.

When working with your product or marketing team, whether it is a trainer, your CTO, or you, make sure you educate people on the why. The why is what sells, for at the end of the day, people rarely care about the how. As long as the how does not involve 8 year olds working in sweat shops or some other horrific scenario, people just want to know how the things they use make a difference. Even price plays second fiddle to benefits in revenue, savings, productivity, and retention.

These are the things to train on when engaging in product discussions. If you are bringing in a new rep, share the unique value proposition and a high level overview of the features and functions that attribute to this value. If you are training current reps to a new version or upgrade, share with them the benefits to the customer that the changes offer. Avoid deep dives and too much competitive comparison. Competitive trainings should be completely separate and long after product education has had time to sink in.

When training on product, keep in mind that this is easily perceived as the dullest of trainings. Usually this is because some techie or marketing guru is sharing irrelevant content and going in many directions of how the ideas came to fruition. Nothing turns of a sales team faster. Sales teams want the why, even if they do not know it. I suggest that you do not spoon feed them the why, but make the engagement as interactive as possible. Get them laughing, and if the presenters lack this skill, it is your role as mediator/coach, to bring the levity to the room. Challenge the audience to uncover the value, get them communicating about the why, and it will leave the room and make it to the sale floor and sales meetings.

Finally, after every sales trainin, I like to send out quizzes a couple of days later. As with any non selling activity, cash prizes are always awarded to who gets the first perfect score, and the second, and the….

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6 comments.

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Tim Rohrer

Comment on June 20th, 2008.

Hi Karl,

I totally get what you are saying. When training sales reps keep your audience in mind and make the training relevant to them. Avoid over explaining the inner workings of technology and arm the sellers with only the information they need to sell the product to the user. This is true for most product categories.

nesh thompson

Comment on June 21st, 2008.

Karl, I like your idea of following up with a quiz a few days after training. This is a wonderful way of reaffirming and maximizing information retention as well as delivering the content again in another form. Information, whether it is in the classroom or the training tends to be given as a lecture which only delivers to the audience information through aural perception. By offering another medium in which the information can be taken, ie. interactive tactile learning, the information has a greater chance of being understood.

Brad Trnavsky

Comment on June 21st, 2008.

Karl,, Great post! I really like the idea of giving quizzes too. I think this would help to really see how much they have retained and if you should revisit this topic soon or if everyone “gets it”.

I
ll be implementing this VERY soon!

Karl Goldfield

Comment on June 22nd, 2008.

Tim,

Exactly. If you want sales people to absorb the lesson, then you have to give them small chunks of valuable information. Repeat it often and have them work through ideas. Otherwise, you may well e-mail them the feature list so they can ignore it.

Nesh and Brad,

At SurfControl, after a new release, they actually quizzed us through an online program. It was a contest and they had the whole company take it. There was a lot of competition in the sales team and morale was high that day. Needless to say, I won…

Colin Wilson

Comment on June 23rd, 2008.

Karl

I think you raise an interesting topic. On the one hand I don’t want sales reps knowing anything about the product – because the end up doing product pitches rather than value presentations and on the other hand they need to know everything in order to be able to position it correctly.

I hate walking talking brochures – wastes everyones time. I love sales professionals who ask great questions… and it’s through questioning you can link benefit and value of the product.

I believe part of product training should feature on how the sales rep will use their new found knowledge… product pitchers go back for customer value training and value adders advance to go and collect $200 as they pass!

Ian Brodie

Comment on June 23rd, 2008.

Hi Karl,

I think you’re right on track here. I don’t do a ton of als training – it’s usualy integrated in with a wider consulting project – but when I have done my greates successes have focused on understanding what the product does for the customer.

Probably the best sessions I’ve done have been to bring real customers in to the training to explain what the product did for them. They can be either on video – or even better, live. This brings real power and passion to their understanding. Especially if the product really means somethign to the customer – a cancer drug which saved their life for example. The difference in motivation and real understanding of the value of the product this brings to the sales team is huge.

Ian