Knowledge Your Sales Reps Need to Succeed

In my last two posts, I’ve discussed the need to assess traits and skills when hiring new sales reps. A third factor is knowledge. Successful sales reps must know your company, products and markets.

Knowledge is learned through training, experience and self education.  Typically, I place more emphasis on the candidate’s knowledge base when the product or service is highly technical or I need to have a market or territory producing in a very short time.

Company, product and industry knowledge can generally be transferred over the course of a few days, weeks or months depending on the depth and breadth of information.  Some of this training occurs during orientation.  Other training occurs during formal training sessions, mentoring or shadowing periods, and through customer interactions.  Mentor or shadowing periods are a period of days or weeks where a new sales representative is assigned to an experienced rep to “learn the ropes.”

Whether you hire a newbie or an experienced sales professional, it is best to invest in training to ensure your sales representative has the information she needs to be successful. Your training investment will drive more sales and generate more revenue.

Wallace Management Group works with companies to train their sales reps and sales leaders.