FIVE

Develop Excellent Product Knowledge

Your level of product knowledge is the foundation of credibility, confidence, and sales competence. Without extensive and detailed knowledge about what you are selling, no sales success is possible. The very best salespeople know their products and services inside and out, and can describe them in detail even without their sales materials or brochures.

Make sure that nobody can ask you a question about your product or service that you can’t answer clearly and persuasively.

When you are clearly an expert on your product and how your product can help your customers improve their life or work, when you can clearly and thoroughly answer any question or concern that the prospect might have about what you are offering, and when it is clear that you have a deep conviction about the goodness and value of what you sell, your credibility goes up.

Know Your Customer

Once you know your product inside and out, the next step in product knowledge is for you to know your customer. Rather than trying to call on or sell to everyone, you should instead think through carefully the very best potential customer for what you sell.

There are three types of information that you must be clear about before you begin selling:

1. Demographics. Describe your ideal or perfect prospect. What is his age, education, occupation, stage of family formation, and previous experience with your product or service. These are the foundation questions of the more than $8 billion that are spent on market research each year in America. For you to move to the top of your field in sales and income, you must be clear about the descriptive or demographic qualities of your customers before you set out. This makes it much easier for you to separate qualified prospects from unqualified prospects early in the conversation.

2. Psychographics. This area is perhaps the most important breakthrough area in selling today. It refers to what is going on inside the mind of your prospective customer. What are the customer’s fears, hopes, desires, and ambitions? What problem does your product solve? What need does your product satisfy? What goal does your product help your prospect to achieve? Perhaps the best question of all is, “What problem or pain do your prospects have that they will pay you to take away?”

3. Ethnographics. This is a newer area of sales success, and it is emerging as one of the most powerful. It refers to exactly how and when your customers use your product or service. What role does your product or service have in your customer’s life or work? By showing prospects that your product or service fits comfortably into their normal lifestyle, you make it far more attractive and easier to purchase.

Identify Your Competitor

Another part of product knowledge is for you to ask and answer this question: “Who is your competitor?”

Who sells a product or service that competes with yours? Who are your primary competitors and who are your secondary competitors?

Remember, each customer has only a certain amount of money. Every sales offer is an attempt to capture that amount of money from the customer. Therefore, every alternate expenditure of this limited amount of money on the part of your customer is a form of competition. In the final result, the customer decides to spend his limited funds on exactly that product or service that is more important and desirable to him than any other similar or competitive product or service at that moment. How can you offer and position your product or service as the very best choice at this moment, all things considered?

Your Customer’s Perspective

In thinking about your competitors, the next question is, “Why does your customer or prospect buy from your competitor?” What are the advantages that your prospective customer perceives in shopping with your competitor? How could you offset those perceived advantages or benefits? How could you position your product or service as being the superior choice to the product/service offered by your competitors?

Many salespeople have become extraordinarily successful by asking and answering this question over and over, and then by using this information to identify new customers and to neutralize the buying desires of customers who are currently purchasing from their competitors.

ACTION EXERCISES

1. What are the three most important benefits, results, or outcomes that a customer will enjoy from purchasing and using your product or service?

2. What are the three most important qualities or characteristics of the ideal customer for what you are selling?