Knowledge is POWER,

At the most basic level, sales is just a conversation. But to close on a sales opportunity, it has to be an effective conversation. The foundation for providing any service or product is to have a strong basis from which to build an effective conversation that can address the customer’s needs.

What are the key factors that can make or break a successful sales presentation? The first key is knowledge. A strong knowledge base provides a means of accelerating the sales process. Having the ability to provide the appropriate information in the most efficient manner eliminates or reduces the time needed to complete the sales process.

Know Your Product
You must be the expert on the product or service that you sell. At the least, know the sources of expertise and build a relationship with them so you can get information in a timely manner. Product knowledge is where features and benefits come into play. The ability to address the strengths and weaknesses of your products enables you to move through a conversation to the sales opportunity.

Know Your Company and Theirs
Have a working understanding of your company. Where it has been? Where it is going? What is its focus and core competencies? Make an impression and know what your customer is doing. This knowledge highlights the best approach for a sales presentation and helps determine what to present first. If you can identify potential needs based on the customer’s business model and current circumstances, you can bring forward a more focused approach for sales.

Know Your Customer
Find out more about whom you will be addressing and as much about their current projects and circumstances as possible. By having a sense of what they are striving to accomplish, you can present your products and services in a way that will seem more relevant.

Know Your Competition
More often than not, customers are looking at multiple solutions. Ultimately they will have to choose what they perceive to be the best solution to address their needs. Help them with this chore by being the one to distinguish what you provide from the other products or services on the market. Go through the decision point-by-point. By helping a customer work through the decision, you also give them the ammunition they need to justify their decision to themselves, or their managers.

Knowledge can be a Weakness
Sales professionals must have knowledge to succeed, but an over-reliance on your own knowledge often proves to be a weakness. No matter how much of an industry expert you become, your customer always knows more about his own business and circumstances. Nobody likes a know-it-all anyway.

Listen Don’t Speak
In the sales conversation, the most powerful tool is being able to listen more than you speak. The ultimate best source of information is the customer. By asking probing questions and listening to the answers, you achieve two objectives. The first is to determine the customer's need, which leads to how you can help. The second is to enable the customer to discover for himself that you are presenting the appropriate solution.

Questions Not Answers
Questions bring people together, and answers take them apart. In the sales process, well-intended questions can be effective in forwarding conversations. For example, you might want to ask a customer to give you a more in-depth view of his industry. Even better, ask a customer to tell you what their customers want. This enables you to support the customer's ultimate goals.

Uncover the Problem, Don't Cover It
Customers are often bombarded with a sales approach that says “what you have is wrong,” followed by “what you really need, I have.” Then the salesman launches into a long, generic presentation. Get potential customers to talk about their company problems in detail. Use questions and examples to enable the customer to discover how to accomplish their objectives with your products and services. They will fight for that solution if they can claim credit for it.