Understand first, sell later..

One of the key challenges in sales is ensuring your sales team or channel partners are well informed about the products they are selling. It is not enough to have the best product - you need people who understand how the product can help solve a customer’s problem. Well informed sales people don’t simply sell, they help customers solve problems. The best sales people are those who a customer would still turn to for advice even if they no longer had a product to sell. They trust and respect the knowledge of the sales person.

It is not always the case that sales people are well informed about the products they are selling, or understand how the product can deliver benefits to customers.  A recent NOP survey found that 85% of shoppers will switch to another shop if sales staff do not fully understand the product they are selling. Over two-thirds of those questioned (67%) said they had gone home without buying a product because they found that the sales staff were not helpful (read more on the survey).

Companies spend millions on developing products, but do not deliver the right level of service to make it easy for their channel partners and sales staff to actually sell the products or services.  Support materials are often fragmented, out of date and not easily available to sales people.

How can technology help?

The internet has made it possible to now deliver a solution that integrates communication, learning and product knowledge. The solution is a dedicated portal or website that gives the channel partner or sales person everything they need to sell the product from information to sales tips. This approach:

• improves communication, as the very latest information can be distributed to a geographically spread workforce instantly
• improves productivity, as the sales partner or salesperson can access the exact information they need quickly and easily
• improves product knowledge, through short, tailored, interactive learning resources
  
• helps sales staff become solutions consultants, as the online learning can provide scenarios and simulations to ensure the sales staff fully understand how the product can deliver benefits
• improves sales skills, through the delivery of sales tips and advice on a regular basis
  

Case Study: Freightliner

The success of this approach can be seen through the work of LogicBay in the US who develop integrated performance centre portals for both channel partners and direct sales teams. They work with clients and channel partners to ensure what they term channel readiness or sales readiness.

LogicBay developed a Dealer Performance Centre for Freightliner that integrated training, communications, tools, resources and incentives. The portal also include sales training and sales simulations. The results were significant:

• Dealer participation in the Performance Center grew nearly three-fold
• from 2000-2004 (2800 North American dealers).
• Freightliner significantly reduced channel turnover rate and produced
• more core loyal customers and channel partners.
• Sales growth went from 11% to 42% over the same period.
  

The benefits of performance portals for specific products, channel partners or sales teams are clear; they are also fast and cost-effective to deliver.

Ideas for you

The simple steps we suggest to improve the performance of your sales team without paying the earth for bespoke e-learning or sales training:

Create an internet hosted site that sales staff can access wherever they are, and then

• Put all your latest product information on it, simple short information pieces
• Interview one of your top sales people each week or month on their top five sales tips and put it this up as audio clips that sales people can download and listen to in the car or at their pc
• Provide a wiki to let sales staff posts their own comments and vote on the top tips each week or month.
• Call Kineo.We can do it for you and you can have your sales support portal up and running within two weeks.