Challenge 2: recording and sharing knowledge
08 August 2011
In order to guarantee the quality of your quotations it is extremely important that your sales people know exactly what they are selling. It often costs them a lot of time to absorb this company-specific knowledge. But is this necessary? And are there simpler ways to have every sales person perform as well as your best sales rep?
Wrestling
Many companies wrestle with the problem of teaching knowledge of products. New sales people need this knowledge before they can produce a quotation. Often this entails extensive training which can stretch from a few months to even a year. After this training period, a first quotation can be made. A milestone! Or is it?
Gamble
It is highly likely that new sales personnel cannot complete quotations independently – even after training – but still need to ask advice from colleagues. That costs sales reps and their colleagues, time… And it costs you money! But of course you’d rather have that, than a sales rep gambling on a guess, running the risk of sending out a faulty quotation. Mistakes cost more money, that’s the way it works. So how could you prevent this type of mistake?
Record knowledge
By recording knowledge, your sales reps will no longer have to keep the information in their heads. Many companies have recorded rules in ‘excellent’ manuals and price books. But that’s not what I mean. As it is still time consuming to look up information and mistakes are still easily made. Are you sure that you have every rule and exception down on paper? And that nothing is missed?
Sales support system
Mistakes can be avoided by recording knowledge originating from all over the company in a sales support system. Your product experts, best sales reps and best financial men and women input their knowledge into the system, where the information is available for your sales personnel. They answer questions on the wishes of their customer and so quickly realize a faultless quotation. So they are guided through the quotation process, so to speak.
Perform like the best sales rep
But where will a guarantee of knowledge security get you? New sales people can start work far more quickly. Knowledge no longer leaves your company along with personnel. Your sales organization is not overtaxed with questions from new employees. And... Each sales rep can perform at the level of the best sales rep, as mistakes are no longer possible using the question and answer system.
Significant results
Guided Selling – as this process is called – is now applied in greatly differing industries. And the results are significant. An example: a manufacturer of high end machinery recently told me how they once forgot to include the calculation for hundreds of thousands of euros because of a mistake in an order. These kinds of mistakes have now really become past tense.
Next week I would like to discuss the dangers of copy and paste behaviour.
Judith Steinmeier is Communication Manager at Sofon – supplier of sales support software. As Judith has a lot of contact with clients, she has a clear insight into how companies that deliver customer-specific products and services can realize improvements within their sales and quotation process.
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