Salespeople have valuable information about success stories, competitive moves, or what’s really working in sales conversations. But how do you collect this valuable information – what we call Tribal Knowledge – from the field?
Salespeople won’t write whitepapers. They don’t give all the written feedback that you want. They may not respond to emails imploring them to fill out forms or success stories. And why should they? Salespeople are busy. They identify business problems, manage sales processes, understand the needs of different roles in the buying process, and navigate their own organizations. All this work is hard enough, so don’t expect salespeople to write books.
But they do ask questions.
Salespeople ask questions because they need to. Even if you’ve got perfect sales assets (and who really does), the market is complex and changing. A new competitive move, a new need, or a new offering will prompt questions that can’t be answered in formal sales materials.
So asking is a critical part of the dialog between Sales, Marketing, and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs).
Asking drives participation from sales. When the questions make it to the right SMEs who are motivated to answer, the questions drive content, because the SMEs provide answers. Content that is just-in-time relevant for the field. And if questions drive content that is institutionalized in a sales platform, they drive insight that is available for the entire field, not just for the asker.
Today SAVO is releasing our Tribal Knowledge capability, a major update to our Sales Enablement platform. With the Tribal Knowledge release, any salesperson can ask a question—in the application or in email—that is automatically routed to the right SMEs who have the answer and are motivated to respond. And instead of that response being lost in email, the SME can respond—in the application or in email—in a way that captures that Tribal Knowledge for others to see. So the next salesperson who has the same question, can get a response, in the application or via email. In this way, the Tribal Knowledge release solves a number of challenges at once, all with the goal of allowing salespeople to have a better conversation.
Want to see how this can work in your organization? Just ask.
