Welcome to Chapter Four of the five minute skills of top sales reps knowledge, what knowledge do you need to do a job in sales? What do you need to know that you need to know beforehand? You're lost or you're in doubt if you are able to take a job in sales, I wouldn't doubt because you've been in in one industry sector and you're not sure if you can move to another industry sector. Let's find it out drawing me that skill. These other lessons that they have, and that is topic number one, your market number two, your products. Number three, the industry sector.

Number four trends and outlook. So, the first thing that you need to know is your market. How does your market looks like how many players competitors are out there? Which market share is every player is there any place With a competitive advantage, what's their route to market? Is it similar to yours? How big is the market?

And what's the trend? What's the outlook? Is it growing, shrinking? What are the main applications of your products and services? Can you expand? Can you specialize?

So having a good knowledge and a good overview of all these aspects, it's extremely important. And for sure, you will not have that information. Just like that. It's something that piles up and it's something that keeps to be refreshed and updated. Like in many other areas, you need to keep finding, searching and updating yourself. Don't just tick daddy okay.

No, I know I got it. It's all done. because things change, markets change, habits change, legislation change. So you have to always keep yourself updated. And you have always to be curious about what's going around and you have many sources, how do you get lost? Where can I find this information?

How can I find it? Don't stress and probably the level of knowledge that you have from each of these items will not be the same problem some who have a very good knowledge, you know that there are three other competitors, you know, their market share, but probably you are still unsure about the trends, about the outlook, about how fast is the market growing or shrinking or about the reach of your product. In what application they can be used to, the level of knowledge doesn't have to be on fire for all of these items that you can close gaps and you can find information and you can, you can develop further knowledge. The point here is you have to become the go to guy from your customers. You have to become a reference for your customers and for the market. You have to become, let's say the specialists, or at least the experienced guy that customers go to asking for advice information, or to understand where the market is going.

And how can you get all this information by one 10th. Of course, a lot of information available in open source in the internet's industry associations can help a lot statistics government statistics. That's a good source that you have. Are your customers. They know a lot from the markets. They know about applications they know about this size they know about, they know about their own competitors.

So, talk to your customers ask, go around, gather information, don't stick, which only one way, or only one route to have this no gather all different sources because very often, there are I wouldn't say conflictive. But there are some rumors, there are some assumptions. There are some information that you can hear, left or right. But then you have to validate it from other people from other sources from your colleagues. So it's important that you keep yourself hungry for knowledge and to keep yourself Curious and that you keep searching and updating yourself. It's very important.

And if you are new to an industry segment is takes a little bit and the beginning can be overwhelming when I started myself in this current role that I am since some four years I knew some basics of the business, but most of the of the information or the knowledge I didn't had it, how big was the market? The players Okay, I knew it. But there are a lot of information that I didn't hit. But that wasn't a reason for me to not accepting the role. Because this information in our This is we are in the era of the information everything is available. The problem sometimes is the cigarettes, what is useful from what is not and where to focus your attention on But information is there, you can build it up, you can improve the level.

And of course in the first strokes in the first month, you cannot pretend to be an expert to your customers, you cannot pretend to know everything about your business to your customers. You need to build a relation that's the basic something on the first month of your of your work. As a sales reps, you have to build the foundations, build the relationship, build the trust, the knowledge comes after your customers knows the products, their customers know the market. They don't need you for that yet. In beginning they need you to understand their needs. They needed to come with solutions they needed to come with competitive offers.

They need you to come which time to listen to them to understand them to support them. All the rest is piling up is piling up. And after three months is you'll be able To share information, you'll be able to talk about what you see what you hear, and you'll be able to have a broader view of the market. But this is a very important point. Your products along with the market, what are your products? What are they good at?

What are they? They're handicaps towards competition. Do they have better features? Do they have features that are not needed? How will distinguish from competition it's important that you know this. Because this is your discussions you will be often confronted with this habit, product from competition is better and you need to know in what is better, you need to know in what levels or in what parameters you need to know, how can you counterbalance that?

Hey, you often buyers will say that just to put you under pressure so that you can give a better price. So find out, ask, get clear information, don't let yourself roll into assumptions, okay? Our product this is not as good as competition, so I have to make a better price. Don't do it, don't do it. But know your product. Know your services, know what is out there in the market.

And know how do you benchmark with them? know, how can you differentiate them? In the end, that's what you're selling your products or services. So if you don't know them, it's going to be tough to defend them, and it's going to be tough to defend them for the correct price. That's the issue. Of course, you can sell anything Think that at the sale price at this current price, that's not the point.

You want to add value to a company, you don't want to leave money on the table. That's what you need to know, hey, what I'm selling is a feat, not a Mercedes. But I have these characteristics. And for this kind of use, this is the best car. But you have to know the reasoning you have to know the background. And if you don't know you cannot simply compare apples with oranges.

Compare apples with apples. That's why you need to know your products or services, the industry sector. We are in in a very fast changing world and a lot of industries have gone through changes with disruptions so being aware and informed and saving knowledge about it. The industry sector where you are in, it's extremely important to based on that image of a reliable source of an expert. So try to be one step ahead of your competitors try to be one step ahead of your customers try to be on top of any new innovation, any new trends, any new legislation, this is something that you can not put a single value on it, but it has a lot of value to your customers. And in their decision making process, when they have to decide if they go place an order in customer, A or B they have in mind or this is the expert.

So have all that in mind. Become a reference for your customers become the go to guy for your customers. And you can only do And you can only become that person. If you build up these knowledge around these points that we have here, trains how it looks, customers will very often ask you when they have to make their budgets or any other period along the year. What are the trends? What are the outlooks?

We are prices going? What do you think that's going to happen next year. And of course, no one has a crystal ball. And I've been in industries where in 15 days, there could be a major shift prices going up or down. But I could always share with my customers what we knew at that point in time. At this point in time, this is what I see.

At this point in time, this is what we think about for the next upcoming month is if there's no major change, this is what we think that we can Expect, at this point in time, always a good disclosure, always with a good disclosure. This isn't the information that we this is how we see things at today's date with information that we have, if something happens tomorrow or the day after, it can change completely these days scenario. So don't take this as written in stone. Take this as what we see and what we think that will happen in the next in the near future. And that will help select customers to validate that with their own views and validate that with how they see and and and then they can clearly see if there's a kind of a joint vision, even if even if things can change along the way but everybody in their reporting lines there are quarterly meetings they need to share internally to their stakeholders or externally even they need to share.

How do they see the next period or next cycle. And it's important that you are able to share that information because again, it helps you out to become a reference. So, this, this is why knowledge is probably the second most important parts in the sales role. If you ask me, am I good at closing quick deals and being an ace in sales. I'm good at building up relationships. Normally when people ask me, What do I do, and I'll tell them and I'm an account manager, and they asked me for the words, what does it mean?

I tell them that I manage relations, I travel. I travel to different countries and cities, I meet different people management managing relations. And by doing so, they place orders and we sell them products or services that helps them to build up their own products or services. But I rarely say that I'm a salesperson, because in the end, the sales are done by themselves, almost some of them I've some of my customers, they place the orders regularly without even discussing price upfront. And they've been doing this for years. Because we have all this history of trust, of reputation of market reference.

And of course, there are these discussions about prices and sometimes there are friction about prices. There needs to be a good background, a good reasoning and We move further. And sometimes we have to be challenged as well. There are other competitors outside markets are challenging and customers face difficulties. So we have to be open and flexible to discuss and to readjust. But all based in relationship, long term vision, most of the hiccups are suppressed suppressed.

And the other this is it. This is the end of the fourth chapter, knowledge. I hope you liked it and see you in the next one. Probably the most exciting one negotiations by