3/15/2024-Product Aptitude

Getting product confidence in sales roles takes a while, so just be honest with customers about what you do and don’t know while building your expertise.

While it’s not imperative to know every little detail about your product to build trust with your customer, you only get one "I don’t know, lemme get back to you" per meeting.

After that, the prospect may start thinking they’re talking to the wrong person.

Learn everything about your company’s "flux capacitor" that the customer needs you to know. Figuring out where to focus your product mastery is solved by chronicling what your customers ask about most often.

Itemize the specific areas of your offering you need to nail to achieve product knowledge confidence.

Seek the right coaches in your org to get you "front-line ready."

After mastering the essentials, use this qualifying question with customers, "So…what’s the significance of your question about our flux capacitor?"

Uncovering the agenda behind their product questions will help you surface objections, too.

Buyers do not expect you to know every single detail about your product, but they also don’t expect to be buffaloed. MSU (Making Sht Up is never an acceptable approach in the high-stakes selling game.)

Positioning yourself as a true product expert relies partly on presentation confidence and a lot on genuine product knowledge.

Buyers won’t freak if you say, "Ya know, I wish I could answer that, but I’ve only been on board a few months and never been asked that before." That’s a legitimate approach. As is this line as a follow-up: "…I need to find out the answer to that for both* of us."

Honesty and humility go a long way to earning the buyer’s trust.

Dr. Emmet Brown (played by Christopher Lloyd in Back to the Future) sure knows his product. If you invented the real (?) flux capacitor, you’d have to.

Take a two-minute break and watch the moment in the movie when *Doc" realizes he built a time machine.

While you should take charge and know as much as possible about your product, don’t stress if you have to play your "I don’t know" card.

You’re not curing cancer.