When you join a company or if a new product is released, there is a good chance you will receive training or some sort of education on the new shiny thing in the companies suite.

It’s important to learn everything you can about it, until you are more than comfortable to discuss this product with a customer with a ton of confidence, then you don’t know enough.

Learning about your products will enable you to successfully answer every question a customer throws at you, which studies have proven makes for a higher chance of winning, but there is something else you should learn which will help you massively when speaking with your customers.

If you learn about the customers industry as-well, and therefore your customers company, the area of business they have chosen to make their career in, that is something entirely different and far more interesting to the customer to speak about.

For starters people enjoy and will continue talking about themselves until the cows come home and this includes what they do and the industry they are in, and should you genuinely show, not only an interest but a rivalling knowledge of said industry they will quickly understand that your product and you as a sales person meet their requirements more efficiently than your competitor because you will confidently show how your product meets their needs and removes the problems within their business based on the route causes, and not just because, “the business asked me to buy it”.

So yes of course, know your products and processes inside out and as mentioned in my last post there are several team members involved in sales to help you during customer conversations, both pre and post sales, but learning your industry aka the customers industry and being able to match your products to a trend or requirement that suits that industry and tell them why, will give you a super edge.

As always please let me know how you get on and any questions, contact me on Twitter or leave a comment.

Thanks for reading

Andrew