Become an Inside Sales Product Specialist to Accelerate Your Sales with Aaron Ross
Want to hyper-grow your company? Make sure your inside sales staff is not just knowledgeable about your product, but also that they are product specialists.
You can predict any salesperson’s earning potential after spending only a few minutes with them. Just ask them about their product.
We often think of good sales people as charismatic, extroverted and persistent. But their ability to sell goes beyond those surface traits.
Creating a predictable revenue stream starts at the ground floor. Your inside sales team should consistently deliver high-end results. But they can’t do that if they don’t understand your product.
Inside sales people with limited product knowledge are detrimental to your company’s growth and make it difficult to map success and allocate resources. When a salesperson cold calls with limited knowledge of their product, every conversation is a gamble. They might win big with a primed buyer one week, but lose an easy win the next because they forgot to bring one fact to the plate. As a result, your quarter may look more like a zig zag than the desired exponential growth curve.
Every sales person should be able to quickly and effectively do the following:
- Describe the product
- Deconstruct features into cost-benefit breakdowns
- Explain the value against competition (this means knowing all existing competition products)
- Demo the product
Today, customers have more tools to research your product and your competitors. They aren’t fielding easy questions anymore. They are launching high and fast inquiries at your inside sales team. An inside sales team with little product knowledge is flatfooted and will only catch leads batted right to their glove. The rest of the opportunities will sail right out of their hands and into the competitor’s.
There is a shifting mindset among customers. They spend more time in the sales cycle and are more considerate. A pretty smiling face won’t win them over like it used to. It’s time we rethink our inside sales approach.
We need customers to understand the value of our products as a “need” not a “want.” An educated inside sales rep is an advocate that will create other brand champions. When they understand the product inside and out, believe in its potential and can showcase it effectively, they become sales magnets.
Want to learn more about how to create predictable revenue and grow your business? Attend NewVoiceMedia’s inaugural conference, Connect, and join my session. I’ll be talking about specialization, perfecting your niche and getting folks to think your products are “need to have” instead of “nice to have.” Be sure to come see us, and learn the best practices I developed for Salesforce.
