3/17/2025-Know your product…sort of.

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.

Contrary to conventional thinking, knowing everything about your product is not essential for success in sales. ("What???")

You’ll never make a prospecting call and get meetings if you believe you need to know it all.

More importantly, focus on becoming skilled at uncovering what part of your product and value your customers care most about.

Your product confidence comes directly from your probing and qualifying skill dexterity.

Today, write down a few questions to ask buyers that will help you understand which parts of your offering they find most appealing.

Try this: "What part of our product most appeals to you?" (Simple, huh?)

Here’s the expert pro move you need to follow up with: ask, "Why?" (And then…listen!)

Alert: ask five different buyers on the same team and you might hear five different answers.

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 this Back to the Future clip – knows everything about his product…the flux capacitor.

Take a two-minute break and watch the moment in the movie when Doc realizes that his invention works!

He’s a great product guy, but odds are Doc would make a terrible seller. Too scattered.