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You can't afford to let the knowledge leak out!

Written by: Todd Youngblood

Article Overview: The sales rep with superior knowledge is a formidable competitor. That's why you have a Sales Excellence Council in place. (Right?) And that group is charged with identifying the best and newest sales best practices and tools. (Right?)

You can't afford to let the knowledge leak out!

"The ability to learn faster than your competitors is the only sustainable competitive advantage." Arie de Geus

I first read this bit of wisdom sometime in the early 90s. Back then, we were just beginning to realize that price, delivery, state-of-the-art product features and after-sale service were simply not good enough any more. The competitive landscape had advanced by then, to the point where even superior knowledge about all those things was not enough to win consistently. We began to realize that we needed to know the customer's business at least as well as the customer, and more realistically, that we had to anticipate problems and requirements. We needed to be there with a cost justified solution, before the customer even knew there was a problem.

It's a gross understatement to say that since those pre-internet days, the pace of the business world has picked up just a tad. In response, I do believe that a few top sales reps have in fact gotten quite good at this "learning faster" thing. Problem is, even the eagles are having a tough time of it any more. And the majority of reps are simply not keeping up. A more formal process is essential.

Think in terms of a Sales Excellence Council comprised of 5-9 of your sales leaders responsible for three things:

• Sales Knowledge Generation - Your top sales personnel are creative, but quite often they are not consciously aware of that fact. They assume everyone else has been and is figuring out and applying new sales processes, best practices and tools on a regular basis. Make these eagles aware that they need to capture every little chunk of sales effectiveness and write it down!
  
  
• Sales Knowledge Sharing - DO NOT underestimate the effectiveness of simply writing things down. Capturing the intelligence is the essential first step. Some of your stars are good writers. Great! Ask them to write a short "tip of month" and then publish and reward them for it. If they're not great writers, that's OK too. Have them present at a sales meeting and have somebody else write it down for them. Or just make an audio recording of it, and make that available. Generate a continuous streaming of new knowledge in, around and throughout the sales organization. Make knowledge sharing a habit for everybody.
  
  
• Sales Knowledge Management - This is the "formal" part and you need two IT systems to do it right. First is a "Sales Knowledge Mine" where all of the processes, practices and tools are captured, sorted, indexed and made electronically available to all sales personnel. Take a look at "wiki" technology for this, although just a plain old internal web site will do for starters. The second system is CRM. One that is actively used for contact, account, opportunity and activity management.
  
  

Knowledge generation, sharing and management. It's one of the core responsibilities of the sales leader. Gee, I wonder if customers would appreciate a sales rep who performed a similar function for them...

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Article Tags: art product, business world, chunk, delivery state, eagles, eff, gross understatement, internet days, knowledge generation, li li, price delivery, product features, sales effectiveness, sales processes, sales reps, strong sales, style text, sustainable competitive advantage, tad, text decoration



Related Forum Posts
Re: Top 9 Questions For Google AdSense Answered! - Hi Chris - this is another question that comes up frequently and there are many misconceptions about it. The CPC is all about maximizing the return for the advertiser - you'll get a high CPC if your ads are in a competitive market, you've niched yourself out to a specific target audience, and you're delivering a high ROI for your advertisers. If you have multiple ads on the page then then Google reads from top to bottom and shows the highest bid at the top. If you have multiple ads and someone clicks on your 3rd ad then you will get less than if they click on the first ad. CTR is determined primarily by how relevant the ads are to your content, the location of your ads, and the design of your ad units. Traffic leak will occur if you have a higher CTR but it depends on what your business model is. If you're trying to make money through AdSense then it's going to come from first time, search engine visitors, not repeat visitors or people who spend a lot of time on your site. Regular visitors are ad blind and don't click on AdSense. If your only business model were AdSense then you would want a high traffic leak... as long as they're clicking on your ads and you're making money.
Re: Top 9 Questions For Google AdSense Answered! - [quote="Evan":3pnbxu60]CTR is determined primarily by how relevant the ads are to your content, the location of your ads, and the design of your ad units. Traffic leak will occur if you have a higher CTR but it depends on what your business model is. If you're trying to make money through AdSense then it's going to come from first time, search engine visitors, not repeat visitors or people who spend a lot of time on your site. Regular visitors are ad blind and don't click on AdSense.[/quote:3pnbxu60] Yeah I agree with this and have found the same. [quote="Evan":3pnbxu60]If your only business model were AdSense then you would want a high traffic leak... as long as they're clicking on your ads and you're making money.[/quote:3pnbxu60] I use Adsense and have an ad supported business, but my business model is different. I try and balance Adsense revenue (and traffic loss through adsense) with having readers browse around my site, click links, leave comments, read the content and get a useful experience from the site - so that they end up sharing or returning. A high Adsense CTR would interfere with this. So I try to balance Adsense placement and CTR with user experience.
Re: What makes a good sales rep? - Thanks Mary for your contribution,this reminds me of another quality of a good sales rep that i would like to share is product knowledge.you cant be a good sale rep if you dont have a good product knowledge. product knowledge enhance good sales because that is the test of the ability of a sales rep.
Usher music leak - I think it's great! Especially if Usher is "acting" pissed that this happened. Hey! People love drama and when it comes from a high profile celebrity it creates enormous word of mouth. Usher isn't shy to try new things out and anytime I hear gossip from someone else before I hear it on TV or Radio means there's some good Word of mouth happening. That's why some days I really enjoy the subway rides (I don't get to do it too often nowdays) - there are so many conversations going on and I heard this rumor about Ushers music leak.
Re: Hello from British Columbia, Canada - Hello Mildred, It's great to see you here at the forum as I am sure your expertise will be greatly appreciated by all the members. I have been greatly impressed with the level of knowledge and support here since I joined and your contributions I am sure will boost the knowledge base already here. regards, Mal.


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