Enablement

Sales enablement and product knowledge

By Seismic — On March 21, 2023

Great sales enablement isn’t possible if sellers aren’t trained on essential product knowledge.

Summary

Consumers and prospective buyers know more than ever these days. Long gone is the sales cycle where sellers can provide basic product knowledge and close the deal. Now customers and prospects spend more time online researching the ins and outs of every product or solution that they’re considering purchasing before they even speak to a sales rep. This means that sales reps need to know everything there is to know about the products they’re selling so they’re ready for the conversation. Keep reading to see how sales enablement software is a powerful tool to deliver product training for the modern seller.

As a manager, you can supply all the sales enablement tools to your reps that you can, but the reason they are just tools is because they need great representatives to actually use them. Sales enablement solutions might consist of prospect tracking, sales playbooks, or call planning and management tied up nicely in a sales enablement software, but without immense product knowledge in sales, the end doesn't justify the means, i.e., the importance of product knowledge is the effect it produces throughout the sales process.

The importance of product knowledge

If you sculpt the classic "knowledge is power" quote in relation to sales, product knowledge will be your resulting piece. Product knowledge training is absolutely necessary for each sales representative to perform adequately in their role. Furthermore, if that knowledge is reinforced at a cadence, reps are going to remain updated and certain about what their product can or cannot provide.

Let's start with the product knowledge definition: which is the understanding of a product's functions and features in order to present the benefits of the product accurately and persuasively. The benefits of product knowledge are a more persuasive presentation, better problem solving, and faster deal-closing. By instilling product intelligence in an employee, that employee becomes more confident in themselves and their delivery to prospects. All too often we see anxiety in sales representatives that don't know the ins and outs of their product and sales enablement through product knowledge helps that.

In B2B sales enablement, the advantages of product knowledge take effect in the form of conversation. Many deals are handled over the phone or through the simplicity of chat messaging. It's pertinent that sales representatives are not only informed on the product, but can effectively communicate the benefits of what they are selling to anyone.

With great product knowledge comes great persuasion. A sales representative who is well-informed of a product, its various features, functions, and use-cases, is going to move on to perfecting the communication of them to prospects. The more enlightened a prospect is by information, the more likely they are going to develop trust with a company and its product. By honing the presentation, a rep is essentially creating a personalized script for themselves. They use their own language to answer questions and problem solve. When the presentation or the solutions are praised, the award takes shape as a signed contract.

Even in prospecting, product knowledge is pertinent. Reps have to have product knowledge to know their targets. When searching for prospects, reps can start at a broad category, then pinpoint prospects who would benefit immensely from the product's differentiating factors.

For sales reps to utilize tools effectively and execute the epitome of the sales enablement definition, product knowledge competency should come first. Whether you're coaching outside sales reps or just onboarding some new rookies, incorporate detailed product knowledge in your sales enablement training.

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Product knowledge training ideas

If you're at a loss on where to start with product knowledge training, we've got a few ideas to include in and outside of your lessons. Start out each lesson with a product knowledge quote. They can be quotes from influential people or even from current employees, just make sure that it ties back to the product they will eventually be selling at the end of the day. Quotes can inspire reps and help them remember what messages to convey when talking about a certain aspect of the product. When you choose an interesting quote and make a connection, sales reps will remember the interesting connection you made and their sales pitches to customers will benefit because of it.

Another option is to have product knowledge training games. You can incorporate a game into a lesson with quizzing capabilities, e.g., display parts of the product and provide multiple choice answers and the rookie who gets the highest number of answers right gets a free lunch. Or, once you've saved time with eLearning, you can use that time to get to know your reps more while also reinforcing product knowledge through games. Creating a fun learning experience has practical worth that extends much farther than the enjoyment of the game itself. The memory created by that fun experience creates a mental bookmark that makes any information gathered during that time spent having fun much easier to recall. The benefit of training games and quizzes is then twofold: Employees enjoy themselves more during a time and ritual that has long since been seen as a hassle, and these same employees learn more and retain more because of the engaging fun that they had.

The importance of product knowledge in customer service can't be overstated either. Whenever a consumer reaches the phone line of a customer service representative, they're usually on their last lifeline. Imagine how much more frustrating it would be when the customer service rep doesn't even know how to fix the problem. By using learning software to distribute product knowledge to your entire team, the company as a whole becomes more enabled toward helping the end-consumer. If you can turn an unhappy consumer who calls customer service support into a positive customer relationship, management software will pay for itself in no time through returning revenue.

Sales enablement software

Even by using the sales enablement best practices to incorporate into training and ongoing training, you can't be everywhere all the time. This is where learning software benefits sales enablement training. With a great online learning platform, sales enablement materials can be formatted into lessons for testing and reviewing. Lessonly by Seismic knows the importance of product knowledge in sales. We use our own learning platform to supply our sales reps with the right learning material to inform and motivate our sales representatives.

Sales enablement software helps reps organize tasks, discover prospects, and close deals faster. At any company, it takes an effective use and balance of sales enablement software to close deals faster, but that effective use and balance is unique to each company and has to be taught in its own way. There's no blanket suggestion for how to close deals faster. We made sure that Lessonly by Seismic integrates with popular sales enablement software and even top CRM software like Salesforce, Zendesk, and Asana. As you're teaching new reps the ins and outs of the company, they can learn the ins and outs of sales enablement software while using it. Lessons can be triggered by actions in the software so that employees can learn the most effective ways to use the software while immersed in it.

For example, if you're managing a national sales representative, you can easily distribute product knowledge training through eLearning lessons to your regional sales representatives. You can complete all the product knowledge training objectives without having to fly the rep in for on-site training. From the perspective of the sales representative, duties are more immediately executed and self-guided. Learning is done on their terms in ways that they can understand. This lets the rep retain information faster so they can act on it more quickly. When training is fast and effective, employees exemplify their learning through action.

Sales enablement jobs become a lot easier with Lessonly by Seismic learning software working alongside. By putting learners through effective and engaging training that they can remember and refer back to whenever they need it, sales enablement roles can focus on the overall strategy and learning for enabling sales workers. eLearning can help managers establish sales enablement framework as part of their training with an effective software tool. By bringing in different viewpoints of the sales process, sales representatives gain insight into a wealth of knowledge about how your product can be sold by focusing on production topics, current features, and competitive analysis. This diverse treasure chest of information gives sales representatives the content that they need to nail every single sales call that they place.

If you're looking for a sales enablement software, do some online research before calling any sales enablement software vendors. Like any software investment, sales enablement software can be complex. It's important to know what functions and features you want, which ones you need, and which ones you wouldn't use. And instead of just going with a software that has your needs and then some, make sure your needs are being covered in full detail.

Sales enablement training with Lessonly by Seismic

Lessonly by Seismic's learning software helps sales teams get up-to-speed and keep them there. Lessonly by Seismic provides an interface that makes lesson-building, delivering, and tracking simple. You can build concise content on product knowledge, assign it to learners wherever they are, track their progress, and completion. With the ease of use, managers can help individuals progress and grow while innovating the learning experience and making sure that it is always the best it can be. No longer does training become just a box to check for administrators to say they have accomplished it. No real learning ever gets done that way. When you invest time and effort into thinking how the learner uses your learning software, it becomes a welcomed experience and a driving factor for employee growth.

Lessonly by Seismic has a myriad of uses. Because we make content easy to build, you have the ability to make it more personal, entertaining, and detailed. Learners learn better because they are better engaged. Incorporating questions in Lessonly by Seismic, like multiple choice and free-response questions, gives insight to managers on how well an individual is learning and provides the opportunity to elicit feedback in order to improve learning or ask for help.

You can also build a variety of sales lessons in Lessonly by Seismic. Whether it's a quick lesson on sales tips or an entire course on sales skills and techniques, we make it easy. Not sure where to start? We have quite a few resources up our digital sleeve to help you build the foundation of a great sales training program.

One of our greatest features in Lessonly by Seismic is our tracking feature. The Gradebook feature stores comprehensive learning data in one place. If you need a report on an individual learner, we do that too. Tracking also comes into effect when questions are included in lessons. If there are quiz questions, you can tell what learners are doing well and what learners need more individualized attention to keep pace. Free-response questions can open a dialogue in which learners can give feedback to admins and managers on improving and innovating within the company.

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