Build a Sales Force of Experts

How to Build the Expert Sales Force

The Missing Link in Across-The-Board Sales Performance Improvement

By John Doerr and Mike Schultz Co-Presidents of RAIN Group and Co-Authors of Rainmaking Conversations

Copyright © RAIN Group 2011 1

How to Build the Expert Sales Force

The Missing Link in Across-The-Board Sales Performance Improvement

Copyright © 2011 RAIN Group

Feel free to republish excerpts from this report as long as you link back to

http://www.RainGroup.com for attribution. You are also welcome to send it anyone who

would be interested or possibly benefit from this white paper.

For more information about RAIN Group visit www.RainGroup.com.

Contact us at [email protected] or call (508) 405-0438.

http://www.raingroup.com/


mailto:[email protected]


Give sales leaders four sales wishes and they

might sound something like this:

1. Improve overall sales performance.

Do you ever think, “I know we should be

getting more out of our sales force, but how

much better can we get and how do we get

there?”

2. Increase account penetration, cross-

selling, and up-selling. Whether you have

10 practice areas or 10,000 product SKU’s,

most organizations have tremendous

untapped opportunity to sell more to

current customers.

3. Launch new products and services

more successfully. You have a new

offering and have done so much to bring it

to market, but when it comes time for your

team to begin selling this “great new thing”

they don’t adopt it fast enough or know it

well enough to sell it.

4. Reduce new sales hire ramp-up time. A

true pain point for many organizations

selling complex products and services is

getting individuals up to speed fast enough.

It can take 12, 18, even 24 months for a

new sales person to become knowledgeable

enough to reach full sales productivity and

be credible with prospects.

Now ask yourself this: If you could improve in

any of these areas, how would that impact your

revenue?

Before you read on, take a minute to answer

this question. Pull out a pen and paper. Open an

Excel spreadsheet. Or just think for a minute:

how much of an increase in sales are we talking

about?

Once you have your answer, read the rest of

this white paper to find out how you can make

these four wishes a reality by tapping into the

power of building a sales force filled with

credible experts.

Throughout this white paper we use

the term “sales people” to mean

anyone who is expected to bring in

new customers and revenue to your

organization. They may be full time

sales people but they can also be

consultants, technical professionals,

department leaders, partners,

managers, and so on.

If You Had Four Sales Wishes What Would They Be?


Ask 10 different sales people at your

organization to describe the value your products

and services deliver. You’ll likely hear ten very

different answers. Some will be compelling,

leaving you wanting more. Others will leave

you disappointed and scratching your head.

When you’re selling complex products and

services, what you know drives results.

According to Aberdeen Group’s research report,

Optimizing Lead-to-Win, best-in-class sales

organizations are markedly better in five success

areas:

1. Overall product and service knowledge

2. Understanding clients’ and prospects’

business challenges

3. Ability to map solutions to challenges

4. Retaining top sales talent

5. On-boarding and training new sales people

Figure 1: Sales Performance Self-Assessments by the Best-in-Class

How Best-in-Class Organizations Outperform the Rest

Source: Aberdeen Group, May 2010


The common thread in these success factors:

getting necessary sales knowledge into the

heads of sales people. The more you know, the

more you sell.

Sales knowledge is a little discussed area that

separates the best from the rest.

Let’s take a closer look at each factor:

1. Demonstrating product knowledge in

the sales process.

If you can’t speak intelligently about your

product or service, the needs it fulfills, and

the impact it has on the customer’s business,

you’ll never be able to sell it.

2. Understanding prospects’ business

challenges.

Uncovering needs is sales 101, but you can’t

uncover the full breadth and depth of needs

until you have a solid understanding of how

you help your customers succeed. That

means you need to know their worlds

backwards and forwards.

3. Mapping products and services to the

prospect’s business challenges.

Only when you view your solutions through

the lens of customer needs and challenges

will your product and service knowledge

have meaning for the customer.

4. Retaining top sales talent.

The faster your sales people are able to get it

(fully understand your solution set and how

you help customers) the more successful

they will be, the more money they’ll make,

and the more likely they’ll stay. When they

don’t get it fast enough, top talent may leave

due to frustration before they blossom.

5. On-boarding and training new sales

hires.

It often takes 12 to 24 months to get new

hires ramped up and selling at full

productivity. If you can get the necessary

sales knowledge into their heads faster, you

can reduce ramp-up time.

Even though most leaders know that knowledge

is key to sales success, when it comes to getting

that knowledge into the heads of their sales

people, many organizations fail.

It’s not that organizations don’t try to get people

the information they need. They just don’t do it

well, and they are rarely innovative about it.


Consider how management, training, and

marketing typically communicate with sales

people:

Death by PowerPoint: Product and

service training consists of days of endless

PowerPoint presentations. After the first

half day sales people have zoned out. And,

as is well established, retention from this

type of classroom training is only about

10%.

Non-stop information flow: Sales people

receive email after email containing PDFs of

different product sheets, collateral, sales

tips, company updates, client success

stories, sales tools and resources, and more.

Inconsistent formats: The material people

receive is always in a different format, so it’s

difficult for them to find the nuggets of

knowledge they need.

Online knowledge base = information

dumping ground: Online knowledge

repositories that are all the rage are often

mismanaged, confusing, and frustrating.

They become information dumping

grounds, making it virtually impossible to

find what you need. It couldn’t be worse if

Kafka himself were managing it.

Information overload: Because none of

the information design and flow is managed

systematically, sales people receive so much

information – too much to absorb – that they

often stop paying attention altogether.

Inaccurate and out-of-date: When sales

people have to go back and find something

that they remember once seeing, they have

no confidence that what they eventually

find is still accurate and up to date.

On top of all this, sales people end up spending

valuable time re-creating the wheel. They do

research that others have already done, rewrite

emails and letters that have already been

written, rewrite proposal material and sales

collateral that’s otherwise available, write their

own sales tools and tip sheets, and so on.

This is all sad and painful, and too often true.

We’ve seen organizations where sales

people receive 22 times the amount of

information they need to succeed.


Building the expertise of your team can have a huge effect on your team’s overall sales performance,

ability to grow accounts, ramp up time, and the success of product launches.

Congratulations! We Just Awarded that Assignment to…Someone Else

Consider this scenario: You deliver an engagement at ACME, Inc. The client loves

how you solved Problem A for them. They’ve spent $100,000. They will save

$2,000,000 over the next 4 years. Working together was a joy. Everything went

swimmingly.

About 3 months later, a VP at your organization says, “I was just talking to the folks

at ACME. Didn’t we work with them a few months ago?”

You: “Yes, we did. It went great. We saved them $2,000,000 by solving Problem A.”

VP: “Did you see that Problem B existed?”

You: “I knew that the situation existed. We studied it. But it’s not my area of focus.

Is that a problem we solve?”

VP: “Yes, we do. And we are perhaps the best firm in the world at solving it. For

another $100k, we could have saved ACME another $2,000,000. Instead, they’re

working with our biggest competitor in that area.”

You: “Well, if I only knew it was that much of an issue. And if I only knew we solved

it.”

VP: “Too bad. I only just found out about the issue myself because our competitor

announced the new contract. Should’ve been our engagement.”

There is a Better Way to Get Your Sales People to

Become Experts


We know from research and experience that the

best-in-class companies are superior at

demonstrating product and service knowledge,

uncovering the full set of customer needs in the

areas of their solutions, and mapping products

and services to those needs.

In other words, they use their expert knowledge

to help customers succeed.

The questions are, how do they do it, and how

can you get all of your people doing it?

3 Keys to Building a Sales Force of

Credible Experts

The companies that are best-in-class with sales

knowledge follow these three keys to success:

1. Embrace the concept of sales

knowledge fluency. Sales people know

what they sell and sell what they know. If

your people cannot speak fluently about

your product and service offerings and ask

the right questions to uncover specific needs

that your solutions fulfill, then they are

leaving money on the table and losing you

deals.

Best-in-class companies work hard to get

their people to become fluent experts.

2. Build and manage a top-notch sales

knowledge base. From the day a sales

person walks into an organization to the day

they retire, they are flooded with

information. Typically, only about 20% of

this information is essential for them to

know. That means they are wasting their

time sifting through the other 80% of

information that is either “nice to know” or

just doesn’t matter.

Best-in-class organizations teach their sales

people what they need to know, and don’t

waste time doing it.

3. Train to sales knowledge fluency, and

get there quickly. The faster you can train

to fluency, the faster your sales people can

take off the training wheels and step on the

gas.

Best-in-class organizations get their teams to

expert knowledge levels, and they get them

there fast.


Think for a minute about what it’s like talking to

someone at your company that really knows their

stuff. If you ask them a question, they have the

answer right away. If you double check the

facts, they’re right.

If you ask them a complex question, you can tell

they know what you’re asking about because

they in return ask great clarification questions

that demonstrate their own knowledge. They

ask questions like a physician diagnosing a

health problem. They get right to the heart of the

issue and they don’t waste time on tangents.

This is what it’s like speaking with a fluent sales

person. Fluent sales people are able to speak the

language of your prospects, of your solutions, of

your markets, and of your company.

We define fluency below:

The knowledge your sales people have, must be

correct (accurate). They have to be able to recall

it without hesitation (speed). They cannot have

gaps in their knowledge that would hamper

their ability to sell (appropriate breadth and

depth).

Most organizations only train sales people to

accuracy. While this is a good start, it leaves

people to their own devices to get to fluency and

many never do.

Leaving the world of sales for a minute, assume

you train a financial manager to use a particular

spreadsheet function. It’s okay if, when they go

to use that function, they hesitate for a moment,

thinking, “Hmmm, how do I do that again? Let’s

look at the help file. Oh, right. Here we go.”

They can still get the job done.

Assume, however, you train sales people only to

the level of accuracy. A customer asks a question

and the sales person says, “Wait, I know this

one. I had training on it. It’s…it’s…it’s…” Even

if they get the right answer, that 5 seconds of

hesitation killed their credibility and the sale.

If a sales person doesn’t respond

immediately when they hear a buying

signal, they miss the sale.

If a sales person doesn’t ask the right

question at the right time, they miss the

opportunity to uncover additional needs

and sell the broadest solution set.

If a sales person doesn’t have a good

answer for an objection, the sale will die in

the 11th hour.

Even if they get it right (accuracy), if they don’t

have the other 2 pieces of the equation they will

lose credibility and miss opportunities.

Fluency = Accuracy + Speed + Breadth &

Depth of Knowledge

Key to Success #1: Embrace Sales Knowledge Fluency


Best-in-class organizations go beyond accuracy and train to fluency.

When we observe the top 10% of sales people in virtually any industry that sells complex products and

services, the sales people are fluent. Even if you push, poke, and prod and do it for a good amount of

time, you still leave saying, “They really know what they’re talking about.”

For best-in-class companies, accuracy is not enough. They embrace the concept of sales

knowledge fluency.

Figure 2: Fluency Needed for Maximum Sales Performance


Creating and managing a sales knowledge base

– a repository where all critical sales knowledge

is housed – is an essential step towards creating

a fluent sales force.

Some companies don’t have a knowledge base

at all. Every time a new sales person (partner,

VP, consultant, or anyone who is expected to

take part in sales conversations), is hired,

someone on the team scrambles to put together

a pile of reading and set of slides for them to

review. This even happens at large companies.

Other companies have some level of a sales

knowledge base. It might be a simple list of

“when someone joins the team, get them this

information;” or, “when we a launch a new

product, give people that information.”

Regardless of the state of your sales knowledge

base, you’re probably thinking, “It’s nowhere

near where it should be.” You have a lot of

company. Few organizations have a great sales

knowledge base.

This is good news for you because the likelihood

of your competitors having one is slim, leaving

opportunities for your sales people to be viewed

as credible experts and to win more deals.

Key to Success #2: Build a Top-Notch Sales Knowledge

Base

Imagine for a minute that your favorite

newspaper or news website was

organized differently every day. Every

time you open it up the information is

in a new spot on the page and labeled

differently. Some days when you visit it

has the content you’re looking for,

while other days, it’s not there.

One more thing: sometimes when you

visit, you find critical content reported

with both typos and factual errors.

Sounds far-fetched, but this is exactly

how sales management, marketing,

and training send important

information to sales people every day.


Getting your sales knowledge base to where it

should be is essential if you want to create a

sales force of experts. To do it right, you need a

sales knowledge base that:

1. Contains only need to know information

for sales (and directs to nice to know

information)

2. Is managed proactively with rigor and

vigilance, and is always up-to-date and

accurate

3. Is built to support both learning and

reference

4. Contains the appropriate breadth and

depth of information needed for sales

success

With these four elements attended to, you can

be sure your sales people are getting exactly the

knowledge they need to speak fluently with

customers and sell the broadest solution set

possible.

Let’s look at each of these 4 elements more

closely.

1. What People Need to Know to

Sell

Before we get to specific content areas that

support sales success, it’s important to draw

boundaries to help us figure out what should

make it in to the knowledge base, and what

should be left out.

Think about the content for your sales

knowledge base in the following way:

Need to know fluently: For need-to-know

information, sales people must have rapid

and accurate recall. Usually this is about

20% of the knowledge in a sales knowledge

base.

Which Person Would You Trust?

Prospect: “If we were to move forward with

this, what happens next?”

Non-fluent sales person: “After we agree to

move forward, which is the first thing to

happen, um…we’ll go through a number of

steps in a process…actually, it’s a 3 stage

process and it’ll take a little while to get

through. Once you get the paperwork that

you’ll get from me…I mean, from customer

service. They’ll either call you or send you an

email…”

Fluent sales person: “After we agree to move

forward, which is the first thing that needs to

happen, we’ll go through a 4 stage process

that will take us about 2 weeks. The first

stage is working through a little paperwork.

Once you sign into the system you’ll get an

immediate email generated from customer

service that will ask you a series of

questions…”


Need to access easily: This is knowledge

with which sales people should be familiar,

be able to access easily, but not be expected

to have on the tips of their tongues.

Usually this is about 80% of the knowledge.

Nice to know: Nice to know information

refers to those pieces of information on the

periphery that allow sales people develop

deep expertise in a particular area and

enhance credibility.

For example, knowledge that a Wall Street

Journal article recently touted the benefits of

the particular product or service you offer

might help you substantiate your credibility,

but so would the other 500 articles in

various publications that do the same. Sales

people don’t need to see every one of them.

Often, nice to know information

overshadows need to know information

because there’s so much of it. A good sales

knowledge base should provide references

to helpful information, but should not

contain these pieces of information outright

in the main knowledge base.

Don’t need to know at all: A good amount

of the information sent to sales is

information they don’t need to know at all.

For example, deep technical information

about how something works, 3 pages of

detail about a competitor that 99% of the

sales force has never competed against,

detail about 66 competitors in their space, 30

minute updates on the progress for building

a 3rd manufacturing plant in Tennessee, and

so on.

The first essential element to building a sales

knowledge base is to make sure it only contains

the need to know information.

2. Proactive Knowledge Base

Management

Building a sales knowledge base is not a one-

time proposition. It must be managed tightly

and proactively.

Without this, the amount of information

mushrooms, the organization of the information

falls apart, and the accuracy of the information

diminishes. That means sales people can’t get

Which Person Would You Trust?

Prospect: “OK, that sounds good. I’m curious

to know what the questions are that your

team will ask me once we get started.”

Non-fluent sales person: “You know, it’s been

a while since I’ve seen them. Hold on, I can

go ask someone.”

Fluent sales person: “There are about 25

questions, and they’re straightforward. For

example, they’ll ask you things like A, B, and

C. Off the top of my head I don’t remember

them all, but if you want to see the list of the

25, I can grab it for you in the next few

minutes and we can walk through it

together.”


through it all, can’t use it efficiently, and don’t

trust it.

Once they don’t trust it, they don’t use it. That’s

the end of your sales knowledge base.

3. Make it Easy to Use and Easy to

Learn

There are 2 core goals of your sales knowledge

base:

Support easy reference: Sales knowledge

bases must be organized to support easy

reference. As noted earlier, in most

situations only about 20% of the knowledge

must be learned fluently, with the other 80%

ready to be accessed when needed. Thus the

information in the sales knowledge base

must be easy to find or sales people will

waste precious time and energy searching

when they should be selling.

Support learning: The sales knowledge

base must be organized to serve as a basis

for learning. If the knowledge base is

constructed correctly, much of the

knowledge learning can be done through

self-study, allowing for a great reduction in

classroom training time.

4. Provide the Breadth and Depth of

Information

Once you know what information needs to be in

the knowledge base, you need to organize it in a

way that is easiest, most complete, and most

helpful for sales people to consume.

To help do this, we’ve developed the Universal

Sales Knowledge Framework as a guide. The

Universal Sales Knowledge Framework is a

comprehensive and logical structure for the

knowledge needed for sales. At the top-level we

organize information into eight essential

knowledge areas:

1. Expectations: What sales people are

expected to produce, the actions they’re

expected to take to produce them, and

guidelines to help them get there.

2. Market Context and Company Value

Proposition: Descriptions of markets you

serve, what’s going on in these markets and

the world of your customers, the general

competitive dynamics, current trends, and

how your company delivers value to the

marketplace.

3. Categories of Common Customer

Needs: Regardless of the complexity of the

market and the customer, customer needs

can be categorized and labeled, making it

easy for your sales people to work

systematically and categorically to uncover

possible needs.

Once you have this done, you can build a

“Customer Needs Profile” that graphically

depicts the various categories of customer

needs. A graphical depiction of the

At one company we know well, sales

people looked in an average of 20

different places before they found what

they were looking for.


Customer Needs Profile is extremely helpful

in training fluent sales people.

4. Company Capabilities as Solutions to

Needs: Most sales knowledge training starts

and ends with product or service

knowledge. It does not position products

and services as solutions to customer needs.

Organizing your capabilities around the

customer’s world makes it easy for sales

people to uncover the full set of needs, map

solutions to customer needs, and sell

benefits versus features.

Organize Capabilities around the Customer’s World:

Connect Markets, Customer Needs, & Solutions

Example: Company solution mapped to specific customer need.


5. Competition: Details of how and why your

company is preferable in specific situations

given other available options.

6. Sales Strategy, Tactics, and Resources:

Descriptions of all facets of your company’s

sales strategy overall and how sales people

can succeed in the variety of sales situations.

7. Post-Sale Delivery: Descriptions of what

happens after a customer agrees to buy from

you.

8. Account Development: Working closely

with number 6 above, this area outlines the

company’s strategy for maintaining,

deepening, and broadening relationships

with customers.

Best-in-class companies make sure these 8 essential areas are in place so their sales

people know exactly where to go to find the information they need to sell.


A sales person can be at your organization for

years sometimes and still not be able to answer

questions about your solutions, uncover

customer needs, identify buying signals, or

speak fluently about your company. The faster

they can, the more they will succeed, and the

more your company will succeed.

As we noted in figure 2, a select group of top

sales people typically make it to fluency on their

own at their own pace. However,

Only a small subset of sales people get there.

Many top out at accuracy.

The knowledge learning process is painful.

It takes much longer than it should.

Assuming your sales knowledge base is ready,

it’s time to build a training program to get sales

people to fluency systematically and quickly. No

more circuitous processes that take 2 years. No

more depending on luck.

When we build sales knowledge fluency

learning programs for organizations at the

RAIN Group, we refer to the process as SPEED:

Sales Person Expertise Expedited Development.

The basics of the SPEED process are as follows.

1. Define fluent knowledge needs: The

first step in developing a SPEED learning

process is to define what information in the

sales knowledge base is “need to know

fluently.” Once you build your knowledge

base, typically about 20% of it can be culled

out as necessary to be on the tip of the

tongue, ready at all times to use.

2. Identify knowledge nuggets: The next

step is to break down that knowledge into

very small nuggets of information, and

build flash cards (or, as we call them, SPEED

Cards) for each nugget. Even if you have

hundreds or thousands of information

nuggets, you can categorize each one into

major areas, and then further break them

down into sets of 20 or so cards each. This

makes it manageable for learning.

3. Categorize knowledge into buckets:

Third, step back and look at major

categories of information and types of

conversations that sales people might have

that “add up” to a discussion around

particular topics. For example, how would a

sales person answer:

• What is it that your company does?

• What needs do you tend to solve for

clients?

• How do you compare to the

competition?

• I see that you have a special method for

solving this particular kind of problem.

Can you tell me about it?

• I’m interested in doing XYZ. Can you

give me an overview of how it works?

When you know the critical “mini

conversations” sales people commonly

have, you can create graphical job aids (we

call them SPEED Graphics) to help sales

people learn.

Key to Success #3: Train to Fluency. Get There Quickly.


4. Train to fluency: While most training

programs stop at accuracy, SPEED trains to

fluency. When you have your SPEED cards

and SPEED graphics built, you roll them

out, along with the sales knowledge base, in

a systematic hybrid self-study and live

blended training and reinforcement

approach.

5. Test and certify knowledge: The last part

is testing for fluency. In the expectations

section of the Universal Sales Knowledge

Framework you should define what sales

people are expected to know, to what level

of expertise, and how knowledge

certification will work.

Companies that follow this process and

implement it well not only build an army of

fluent sales experts, they build it quickly.

Best-in-class companies get their teams to expert knowledge levels and get them there

fast.


A few years ago, we were working with a Fortune 500 provider of logistics services. As a part of this

process, we asked them to send us all of the information they send to sales people over the course of six

months.

A few days later we received a delivery of 3 large boxes full of documents. When we unpacked

everything and organized it, it filled 18 large 3 ring binders.

After sifting through the mounds of documents, and removing all the “nice to know” and “not needed”

information, we used the Universal Sales Knowledge Framework to categorize everything and remove

duplicate information. When we finished building the sales knowledge base, we had decreased the

amount of information sales people were expected to learn by 86%. What filled 18 binders, now filled

only 2 ½ binders.

What’s more, after launching the SPEED learning program, the company cut down the initial ramp up

time of new people from 40 to 12 weeks, and helped them achieve fluent knowledge levels across the

board.

Within 12 months, existing sales people increased the average number of products and services sold to

customers from 5 to 7 (a 40% increase), which amounted to tens of millions of dollars in increased

revenue.

Putting Sales Knowledge Fluency to Work


The four sales wishes we introduced at the

outset of this white paper are within you reach.

You can:

1. Improve overall sales performance

2. Increase account penetration, cross-selling,

and up-selling

3. Improve the success of your product and

service launches

4. Reduce ramp-up time of new hires to get

them selling at full productivity faster

Companies spend significant time and effort to

make these happen, but rarely do they consider

the impact of building sales people into fluent

experts. For many, it’s the missing link to

achieving across-the-board sales performance

improvement.

Let RAIN Group Help You Build a Sales Force of Experts

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you improve overall sales performance and

build a sales force full of fluent experts. Contact us at www.RainGroup.com, call 508-405-0438,

or email us at [email protected].

Your 4 Sales Wishes Can Come True




RAIN Group is a sales performance improvement company. Located in greater Boston, we help

companies that sell complex products and services to develop an army of rainmakers – top sales

performers who drive exceptional revenue growth.

We’ve helped tens of thousands of sales people in hundreds of organizations increase their sales

significantly.

We help our clients:

Enhance sales skills and improve sales results

Increase cross and up-selling success

Recruit, hire, and retain the best sales reps

Greatly reduce the learning curve for new hires

Increase the success of new product and service launches

Bottom line: We help our clients win more deals, win them faster, and win them at higher

margins.

Contact Us

Learn more about how RAIN Group can help you develop an army of rainmakers at your organization.

Call: 508-405-0438

Email: [email protected]

Visit: www.RainGroup.com

About RAIN Group



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