Edward

Product Knowledge vs Customer Knowledge
Sales training typically focuses heavily on product knowledge. Features, benefits, competitive advantages, technical specifications. The assumption is that better product knowledge leads to better sales results.
This assumption is mostly wrong.
Product knowledge is important, but customer knowledge is more important. Understanding how customers think about their problems, what criteria they use to make decisions, and what concerns keep them awake at night matters more than knowing every feature of your product.
I worked with a telecommunications company where the sales team could recite technical specifications for dozens of products but couldn't explain why a customer should care about any of them. They'd been trained to deliver detailed presentations about network reliability and data transfer speeds to customers who just wanted their email to work properly.
Meanwhile, their competitors were having conversations about business outcomes and customer frustrations. Guess who won more deals?
The most successful salespeople I know spend more time learning about their customers' industries and challenges than they do memorising product features.
The Relationship Building Myth
Sales training often emphasises "relationship building" as the foundation of successful selling. Build rapport, find common interests, establish trust, then present your solution.
This advice isn't wrong, but it's incomplete. Many salespeople interpret "relationship building" as making small talk and being likeable while completely ignoring whether they're actually helping the customer solve meaningful problems.
I've watched sales reps spend hours building rapport with prospects who had no authority to make purchasing decisions and no interest in the products being offered. They confused being friendly with being helpful.