Product Knowledge vs. Sales Skills: Striking the Right Onboarding Balance
Knowing the Product is Not the Same as Knowing How to Sell It
For representatives to be trained properly for the job, there is much more to onboarding than providing information about the company's products or services. Sales representatives must also learn to communicate value effectively, listen actively to buyer concerns, handle objections, and guide prospects toward informed purchasing decisions.
Unfortunately, many companies devote most of their attention to product details and put less effort into training their representatives in selling techniques. This creates a gap between product knowledge and selling skills, leaving representatives familiar with their offerings but struggling to convert prospects into customers.
This issue is especially relevant when speaking about B2B sales since in such sales buying decisions usually imply certain requirements, many parties involved, and much money spent on buying a product. Thus, it is important that representatives not only understand their product but also know how to link their solutions to customers' needs.
Understanding Product Knowledge and Sales Skills in B2B Onboarding
The purpose of product knowledge and sales skills is different; however, when combined, they become more effective. The former helps representatives learn about the products they sell, while the latter allows them to communicate their importance to potential customers.
An efficient onboarding process guarantees that representatives will acquire both skills, rather than treat them as separate learning goals.
Product Knowledge: Learn What You Sell
Product knowledge is related to the features, benefits, application scenarios, limitations, and competitive advantages of a solution. It also implies knowing what customer issues can be solved with the help of the product and how its capabilities can be used for achieving business goals. With such knowledge, representatives will be able to provide accurate answers and discuss product functionality.
When talking about product knowledge in B2B environments, one should go beyond product specifications. Representatives need to understand how the solution fits into the customer's processes and where it can bring value. They also need to know under what circumstances the solution is not a good choice for the customer.
Sales Skills: Understanding the Ability to Communicate Value
Sales skills determine how well representatives will be able to apply their knowledge in order to communicate with buyers. Sales skills include active listening, discovery questioning, prospect qualification, value-based communication, objection management, negotiation, and closing.
The representative can know everything about the product and yet fail to recognize what is important for the prospect. Strong sales skills enable representatives to uncover customer needs, identify key challenges, and ask the right questions to guide meaningful sales conversations.
Why Sales Onboarding Needs Both Product Knowledge and Sales Skills
Lack of good sales skills, in addition to product knowledge, may cause a discussion focused on the features of the product and technical aspects. Representatives may provide a description of what the solution does without providing the reasons why it is useful for the buyer. If buyers do not see the connection between the product and their needs, even the correct presentation will not cause any interest.
In case representatives have a good set of communication skills but lack product knowledge, they may provide good presentations but find it hard to answer questions and provide recommendations. This will reduce the buyer's confidence and create false expectations.
A combination of both skills will help representatives match information about the product with the goals of the buyer. They will be able to ask the right questions, choose the most appropriate product benefits, and explain how they contribute to the buyer's goals. In B2B sales, this combination is necessary.
How to Balance Product Training and Sales Skills Development
Product Training Based on Customers' Problems
Product training is most beneficial when it starts with the problems that customers have and wish to solve. Rather than providing a lengthy list of features, the trainer needs to explain how the product solves specific challenges, what customer personas would benefit from specific product capabilities, and what outcomes customers may expect.
It will help representatives learn when to bring up specific features and how to make them relevant. This way, they will be able to go beyond product specs and think about customers' business priorities. If product training is based on actual buying situations, then new hires will be able to use their knowledge in sales conversations.
Sales Skills Training through Practice
Representatives require chances to hone their selling skills without having to rely only on presentations and documents. Role-playing, mock discovery calls, objection handling exercises, and sales simulations provide such opportunities.
For example, such a training session would require the representative to learn reasons why a prospect is looking for a new solution, identify key issues of concern to that prospect, and suggest the right action. Training sessions can thus test both the questioning skills and the representative's capacity to articulate related benefits of the products in question. This would make the training process more practical and allow the manager to identify specific areas requiring improvement.
Link Product Capabilities to Relevant Business Outcomes
A competent sales representative will be able to tell the buyer why a certain capability is important to his business rather than what its capabilities are. For example, reporting skills can help representatives identify areas that require further attention by providing clearer insights into performance. The buyer should be able to relate to this benefit.
Sales onboarding should be used to help the staff link product capabilities with real business outcomes. Overstating the benefits of a product to the client should not happen at any point during the discussion.
Learning Reinforcement Through Practical Sales Experiences
The training on the product and sales must be done through an exercise that simulates the actual interaction with customers. The representative may learn how to show a certain feature of the product, answer the concerns of the client, or suggest solutions according to specific problems of the company.
The managers must see if the representative is able to speak about the product, ask appropriate questions, and react to the received information. Such exercises will show if the representatives are able to use their knowledge or remember the training materials.
Build a Sales Training Curriculum That Integrates Both
A good sales training curriculum must ensure that representatives build product knowledge and selling skills during their onboarding. They must get to know the product, target market, customer problems, and competitive landscape. They must put that knowledge to work via various sales activities, role-playing, etc.
The learning about the product needs to take place alongside the development of selling skills. As an example, representatives might learn more about some particular product feature and then apply this knowledge by practicing selling this feature during the mock discovery call.
The training must also incorporate evaluations, call reviews, role-playing, and feedback from managers. The amount of product knowledge required and the difficulty level of sales activities will depend on the nature of the sales position. Those selling technical products may need more product knowledge, while representatives who are responsible for consultative selling require extra discovery and value-based selling skills.
How to Measure Whether Your Training Balance Is Working
Sales managers should evaluate whether the onboarding process equips new representatives with the product knowledge and practical selling skills needed to succeed in the field. Product knowledge assessments help determine whether representatives understand the product's key features, applications, limitations, and benefits. Yet, this shouldn't be the only way to make an assessment.
Evaluations that check discovery questioning, listening, handling objections, and communicating value will help managers know whether people have these skills. Call review can show whether representatives link product benefits to customers' needs. Opportunity quality, qualification, and conversions can also help managers see the effect of training on sales.
This information should be taken together. It is possible that someone knows everything about the product but cannot do discovery calls, and vice versa. The manager has to know the gaps in order to give additional coaching.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Balancing Product Knowledge and Sales Skills
The first error is the practice of educating representatives about the technicalities of the product even before they understand how it is used by the customers. The second error is separating the training on product knowledge and selling skills and giving the representatives no chance to apply them in real-life scenarios.
Companies often rely too heavily on quizzes and generic sales training programs without tailoring them to their products, target customers, and specific sales processes. Such practices result in a discrepancy between theoretical knowledge and the actual selling skills of representatives. These errors should be avoided by creating a comprehensive curriculum.
Turn Product Knowledge Into Selling Confidence
It is crucial to achieve a balance between sales and product knowledge in order to successfully conduct business-to-business sales onboarding. Sales representatives require relevant product information in order to be credible but also should be able to ask relevant questions, understand what is important for the client, overcome objections, and explain the value of the product.
Product knowledge can be taught through customer problems, while selling skills can be reinforced through practice. The onboarding process should include assessment tests, call reviews, and coaching to make sure that new hires will be able to apply acquired knowledge.
It is not enough for successful onboarding to memorize information about products. The key point is how the sales representative will use his knowledge to understand his customer, provide an appropriate solution, and facilitate the buying decision. The most successful sales representatives not only know what they sell, but also know how to communicate its value.
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