Product knowledge training is not sales training

Although highly important, product knowledge training is not sales training. Many of our customers started off with the exact same sentence, “we already have training in house”.

I can’t tell you how many phone calls, emails and messages started off this way (around 90%).

Managers, directors and decision makers were all too busy to stop and think if their product knowledge training was actually helping enhance their sales team’s sales skills.

Product knowledge training helps sales teams know their product inside and out, it is necessary to know all features, functions, benefits and results it offers each an every customer. But without knowing the techniques, skills and strategies in how to actually sell the item your team is not getting the training they need to be as effective as possible.

That is why product knowledge training is not sales training.

Effective sales training helps give your team confidence and teaches them how to communicate effectively. Now, don’t get effective sales training mixed up with old fashioned techniques and skills that include one-liners, aggressive behaviors, pushing people into corners and untruthful practices. Effective sales training will teach your team natural human to human connection and emotional connection. It will focus on a consultative, client-oriented approach that focus on pulling your customer towards you not pushing them into a corner.

Product knowledge training does not teach your sales team how to establish trust, how to read the body language of a potential buyer, how to sell based on value to increase your order profitability through identifying and communicating your intrinsic and extrinsic value that moves your client to take action. It does not teach your sales team the power of asking the right questions at the right time, or how authentic influence can actually help you communicate to enable a deeper more loyal connection.

Effective sales training gives sales teams the confidence to sell your product or service. With the right sales training and the right product knowledge training, you will get a team that knows how the product or service works inside and out, and have the ability to professionally sell the item to the prospective buyer. When sales teams only go through product knowledge training they find themselves following what other people are doing and not selling to the best of their abilities. When proper training is in place, your team will know what to say, how to apply the skills taught and have the confidence to see the sale through.

Arabella Sherr

arabella@appliedexcellence.com

www.appliedexcellence.com