Product Information packaged the way salespeople use it: The 7 "W's"

What information do salespeople need regarding the product? Often times marketing tries to make this determination and they create the information from what they think the salesperson needs. Since marketing is going to create the material, at least initially, it is important it be assembled in salesperson's terms. This what I call the "7 W's": What is it that I'm selling? Who do I sell it to? Why do they want it? What is its value? What does it cost? Who is the competition? and Where have we done this? This simple formula can take mountains of information and reduce it to a usable sales friendly package.

What is it that I'm selling? At least initially, this is a simple description of the product and its capabilities/functionality. This generally does not include a lot about how it does what it does. This is the technical part of the conversation and is necessary in dealing with technical audiences. It is my experience, that when this is necessary, this conversation is best delivered by the sales engineer.

Why do they want it? This is the business challenge that the product/solution addresses. Most marketing materials contain this information but it needs to be modified for sales. It needs to be presented in terms of who specifically in the target company has this challenge and questions provided to help the salesperson probe this person to uncover if it in fact it is a challenge this person faced.

You can see that the next "W", who to sell to? is intertwined. If you look at salespeople, their job is to sell to people. So when training them you have to be certain that the materials are set up to identify these people and help the salespeople explore these peoples challenge.

The next "W", what is the value? also needs to be related to the individual target individual(s) with in the target company. What is the specific value?, not just financial to that person.

If you can determine the value for the targeted individual you can put this in perspective to the cost information of the product solution. So yes they need to know the cost but they need to have it justified by the value.

Salespeople need to know the competition and their position and pricing to anticipate objections and competitive tactics.

Where have we done this is very important information for the salesperson. Prospectives are many times more receptive to the opinions of their counterparts at companies in the same industry. So success stories and customer references become key components of the information required to successfully sell products.

To successfully train on a product/solution be sure you can repackage the materials to answer these 7 questions.

In the next entry I will give an actual example of how we took industry information and aligned it, packaged it and distributed in a way that matches how salespeople think and work.

A Simple Metaphor

Making something that is technical, simple, is a challenge. I said in my previous entry,  I would give an example. When I was hired at Sterling Commerce, my first assignment was to teach our managed file transfer solution to some sales new hires and managers. I was given a power point deck of 60 slides (including many technical ones) for a 1.5 hour presentation. I really struggled with this task. I was new, so I said to myself: " learn the material and use the deck provided." So I prepared for session with that as the game plan. Two days before the session I determined I could not deliver this as prepared. It was not me and as a trainer you must be yourself.

I thought about it and came up with the metaphor that file transfer was like playing catch, you know with a ball, like you did as a kid. The night before the class I went around the house gathering props. I borrowed a softball, basketball and baseball from my daughters and a huge Pilate's ball from my wife. I grabbed all the ping pong balls I could find, added a Frisbee and even added some toys from our dog to my collection. I then found a fishing net and a racquetball racket and a scoop like net used also to play a type of catch. I showed up at class the next day looking a lot like a person returning from a garage sale.

I told the class that I was going to do a demonstration of challenges of file transfer and I would need some help. So I got two volunteers up in front of the class and had them start tossing a soft rubber ball back and forth . And I said; "See isn't file transfer easy?" Then I asked; "Or is it?" as I turned one of the volunteers around, so he could no longer see the ball coming and it hit him softly in the back. So then I said it is easy if you know the file is coming. With some methods of file transfer you don't know a file is coming. That becomes challenge number one to know when a file transfer is coming.

I then had another volunteer come up and I gave him a bag of about 20 ping pong balls and asked him to toss them gently to the other volunteer. Obviously the person could not catch all of the ping pong ball thrown at once and some went on the floor. Managed file transfer challenge number 2 is many small files delivered at once.

I then asked another volunteer to roll the big Pilate's ball at the other volunteer. This was to illustrate the challenge of receiving a very large files (terabytes).

I then gave the one volunteer a baseball glove and started tossing the baseball and the softball but then added a basketball, and Frisbee and the glove was no longer adequate to catch all the different objects being thrown. This illustrated the challenge of receiving different, multiple file protocols.

Then while they were playing catch I asked another volunteer to take the fishing net and try to grab the ball in flight. This of course represented the challenge of hackers trying to intercept the file.

I then directed the volunteers to opposite ends of the room and asked them to toss the ball back and forth across the length of the room. I then turned the lights out in the middle of the toss and the ball fell to floor. This was to indicate the challenge of a loss of power in the middle of a file transfer.

After illustrating the challenges I then continued to illustrate in the demonstration how our products overcome these challenges.

I left the PowerPoint slides in their handouts as addendum's and in subsequent classes I eliminated them all together. PowerPoint has become a crutch for trainers and salespeople alike. Over the years I have seen the salespeople from this class and they have remarked how effective and memorable the file transfer session was. To simplify a technical topic there is nothing better than a good metaphor.

In our next entry I will talk about the challenge of taking product information and repackaging it a way salespeople can most effectively use it.

"Simplify, Simplify, Simplify"

I have taught some very technical training but it is important to heed the advice of Thoreau and "Simplify, simplify simplify." Yes it is important that our salespeople be comfortable and competent with the technology but it is not something to hide behind. A good salesperson is able to speak to his or her audience at the appropriate levels and in a language that speaks to that audience.

Here is where a good trainer can really help a salesperson. The use of stories, analogies, metaphors and good examples can break down a technical presentation into an effective and memorable one. This is something effective trainers do all the time so if you can look at the technical products and explain them in simple terms you can help the salesperson accomplish one of his most difficult tasks.

Technology unfortunately often is used as a crutch to fall back on in a presentation. It becomes sort of a comfort zone for some salespeople. Simplifying the product will help them present effectively to other audiences such as business users and financial decision makers. I have a great example of this using a simple metaphor that I will share with you in the next entry.

Example Readiness to Execute: "Great Beginnings"

When I talked about the importance of a good closing to your session, I mentioned that this paved the way for the learner to go out and execute the learned behaviors, concepts and practices. The example I have chosen to share is one I used to close new hire training sessions. I call it "Great Beginnings."

After a multi-day session, with of lots of great information, where they have met many talented and key individuals within the company, you need to send the new salesperson off with the belief that they have joined a great company and will be a key part of great team and do great things in the future.

This the closing I give them. I start by giving them some well known quotes from literature and ask them to identify the author and the work. For example:

"It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

"Happy families are all alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy it's own way." Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina.

"Call me Ishmael." Herman Melville, Moby Dick.

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary" Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven.

"Whose woods are these? I think I know. His house is in the village though." Robert Frost, Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Eve.

Then after guessing them correctly I ask them: What do all these quotes have in common? Invariably one or two of them figure out that they are all opening lines.

I then say; yes but more than just opening lines, they are all "great beginnings". This week you had your "great beginning" with us. If you think about those quotes they were all great beginnings to even greater stories. Let us all hope that this week. like these quotes, was for you a great beginning to an even greater story with us! Welcome to you all and good luck!

In the next entry I will talk about a key element in producing effective sales training for a technical product.