Jill Konrath is a thought leader, speaker and best-selling author. Her career is defined by constantly researching new sale strategies that can be applied to today’s business world. As a business-to-business sales expert, Konrath’s ideas and insights are globally used in multiple forums, both on and offline. A regular keynote speaker at leading sales conferences, she also is the author of “SNAP Selling,” “Selling to Big Companies,” and “Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today’s Ever-Changing Sales World.” Smart Business spoke with Konrath about rapidly absorbing new information and how to leverage an agile mindset.
In “Agile Selling,” you point out that most customers now reach first to the Web to find information. How specific does a website need to be? If a company has more than one location, does each location need its own site?
I’m not sure it’s necessary for each location to have its own site. What is necessary, however, is that each website have the kind of content customers who are searching for answers are looking for. If I were to ask, ‘What belongs in the website?’ I would ask what are my customers’ current situations? What are they likely using today? What are the issues and challenges they’re facing right now with their current methodology, processes and products?
The other thing I would strongly suggest is that every individual on the sales team have a strong LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn profiles need to be written from a customer perspective, not a job hunter’s perspective. It should be customer focused and say, “I help customers solve these problems and in my work with companies we work on doing this,” or “We’ve been able to help our customers reduce, eliminate, minimize, enhance.”
How do you believe an organization is able to hold people accountable for learning? Is there a good method to set up accountability?
The focus of my entire career is individual growth as opposed to what can corporations do to track and monitor learning. I think it can be part of your expectations for a person and they should have a plan to get better. I know when I was in the corporate world, we were expected to put together a plan and were held accountable for it. I think you can build in things where people teach other people. Again, they have to share what they’re learning and it just becomes who we are. We are a learning group and it becomes how we operate.
New sales representatives are usually provided prepackaged info about the company’s product portfolio. Is this a mistake? Is it better to let new sales reps do their own chunking, breaking things down into units, rather than trying to have them learn the company’s way?
New sales reps come in and have no idea what to chunk. They need to rely on your guidance. You need to realize that giving them everything that they need to learn at one particular moment in time is probably overwhelming.
What I would suggest is that you take your chunking and go down one step further and say, “This is everything that they need to learn about our product.” New sales reps don’t need to learn everything, you need to get them up and running on going after a certain target market segment.
“Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today’s Ever-Changing Sales World”
>> By Jill Konrath
>> Portfolio, 272 pages, $27.95
About the book>> “Agile Selling: Get Up to Speed Quickly in Today’s Ever-Changing Sales World” helps salespeople cultivate the ability to quickly learn new info and then leverage it for maximum impact.
The author>> Jill Konrath is a sales strategist whose clients include Fortune 500 companies and numerous midmarket firms. She’s a frequent speaker at sales conferences and kickoff meetings. Her previous books include “Selling to Big Companies” and “SNAP Selling,” available as a summary in Soundview’s library.
Why you should read it>> We are bombarded by new information daily. By developing your skills to quickly learn and apply that knowledge, you will succeed in any business situation. Konrath argues that today’s savvy, well-educated prospects expect you to be a knowledgeable resource from the first minute of your relationship, which is why you need to be successful in the shortest possible time.
Why it’s different>> “Agile Selling” offers insights into how agile learning can be used as your competitive advantage. Instead of providing case studies with little direct applicability, Konrath gives readers practical tips to embrace an agile mindset.
Can’t miss>> If you’re selling in a field you’re not an expert in, it can prove difficult to explain the product and benefits to a customer. In the section, Take the Gobbledygook Test, Konrath urges readers to figure out how to articulate your new knowledge.
To share or not to share>> Learning how to absorb new information at a fast pace is valuable, for not only salespeople, but anyone in the business world. You should share “Agile Selling” with anyone who feels the pressure of learning.
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