Many sales gurus rightly point out the fact that selling is not the presentation of products, but rather gaining confidences and anticipating the personal considerations of the deciders. Still, the importance of substantive knowledge in the sales process should not be underestimated. After all, without thorough knowledge, doing business becomes very difficult.
Knowledge in heads
A great deal of knowledge about products and solutions is often found in the heads of just a few experienced employees. There are various reasons why this knowledge is not recorded: there is no time to do so, it is too difficult to record everything or the employee is not interested in recording his/her knowledge to such a degree that he/she appears to become less needed.
Transferring knowledge
In difficult times, it is sometimes necessary to bid farewell to some employees, and as a result some valuable knowledge can be lost. In good times, however, new people are hired who take months to become productive. Retaining knowledge, and being able to impart knowledge quickly, therefore, is important in good times and in bad times.
Consolidating knowledge
If it were possible to record important sales knowledge, the dependency of a number of individuals would decrease considerably. This would also enable to train new personnel more quickly. But is it possible to record complex sales knowledge?
Retiring with confidence
In Sofon, the ‘knowledge holders’ themselves can record their knowledge in so-called models. Recently, a German machine manufacturer decided to enter the knowledge of one of their employees nearing retirement in Sofon. 50 years of experience was bundled into a few Sofon models. This company can now feel secure in seeing their expert off into retirement. Less-experienced personnel can now prepare error-free quotations themselves.
Minimized training time
We regularly hear from other customers that, since the implementation of Sofon, training times have been brought down from months to a few weeks. Whereas a sales representative once took months before being able to issue their first quotation, now they were able to do so within a few weeks.
Growth or downsize
So if your company is now going to grow or must shrink, any time is always a good time record business-critical sales knowledge. You do not have to bring in expensive consultants to do that. Would you like to know how? We would be happy to show you.
