Impressive...or is it?

"Wow! How do they know all that?!"

Impressing a client with industry knowledge can be very effective...but it has to be used in the right way.

I've worked with salespeople over the years who knew so much about their industry they could talk for hours on the subject with gravitas and authority. The insights they had were really quite impressive.

But they wouldn't know when to stop, and they would end up getting lost down a rabbit hole of market insights.

In the process they would forget almost everything else. Questioning, active listening, objection handling, urgency, and matching the specific part of their solution in order to solve the buyer's challenge.

It was almost as if they were so hyped up by their insights in order to impress the client they didn't know when to stop.

And whilst they'd have in-depth intellectual conversations, they would usually form more of a friendship. The result - no business.

In essence it's really just another form of pandering to the client without any conversational direction or control. No tension, no urgency, and no call to action.

So whilst it's important to know your sector and its associated challenges, it is just another tool to be used in conjunction with an effective sales process which should never be overlooked.