The Mistakes Most Channel Sales Teams Overlook

their manufacturers, reps or independent third parties. They bring in their business development people, their regional managers, their product people, all together to get excited, and they're gonna talk about their new product offerings to get people really excited and pumped up about this new stuff they're coming out with that's going to potentially change their industry. Well, maybe not, but that's the story that we tell everybody is, wow. This is going to be pivotal.

It's going to change everything as you know it, each team member that you have, of course, wants you to dedicate an hour. The product managers want to come in. They want to spend an hour talking about the new features, the new capabilities, on why everyone's world is going to change because of this capability. It's usually something that's a very small feature change, but we believe that it has changed the world.

Are you asking the right question, though, are your top performing reps, whether they be independent manufacturers reps, or whether they be your sales reps? Are they the ones who have the most extensive product knowledge, or the top performers, the ones who know best how to solve client problems, how to uncover opportunities, how to ask the right questions to get your clients to say, Wow, I need this better than the alternative product that's out in the

marketplace. And what we find is that the top performers tend to have the greatest sell sales skills. They tend to ask the best questions. They tend to have the greatest curiosity to uncover opportunities, rather than necessarily just having a ton of new product knowledge. So if you want to introduce new products, and you have new products to introduce, here's what I would suggest you do instead, instead of spending time talking about the features and benefits and capabilities of

this new product. Instead, have your product managers talk about, why did you introduce this product to begin with? What was the demand in the marketplace? What problem is it designed to solve, and what questions should you be asking as a rep to uncover the need for that product out in the

marketplace. So if you have a feature that, let's say, has to do with HVAC equipment and how you hang metal, or whatever it is, how you hang wires, then you better talk about, here's what it does for installers that actually makes their life better and reduces risk. You can't just say, well, here's something that improves sheet metal or here's a new thing we want you to buy. You have to explain to the customer what they would be

looking for. Say if you've been frustrated with XYZ, ABC in the past, here's a way to solve that we found in our tests and our studies. It reduces labor by 15% and reduces rework. Well, that's a reason to buy it, not just the capability in itself. You also want to solicit info in advance from your attendees that says, Where are deals getting stuck? Where are we having problems out

there in the marketplace? What can the company do to reduce friction and make it easier to do business with us compared to other brands? Because now we're getting insight from them that says, Wow, these guys actually care about what it's like to do business with them. That's great. Now I understand where the real value is. You also want to think through what can some of those responses be? Someone might say, well, your stuff is more expensive. If we get that in advance, we can say some

people have said it's more expensive. Here are three case studies of why, even though it's a little bit more expensive, people get a better result from this. How are your results different? And now people go, Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. I guess it does make sense that it is more expensive because we get a better outcome. If you want to get top results for your team, take a look at these Same Side, Selling Academy. Just visit same

side, selling.com to learn more. Create different role play scenarios with the attendees, so you can model great conversations and outreach techniques that drive results for everybody. So you can say, look, here are ways to start the conversation about this new offering. Here are ways to get people to consider switching from what they've used in the

past to our solution. And then finally, ensure that the attendees leave the event with actionable plans to reinforce the concepts, and then set up a mechanism to reward ongoing engagement, so you can create video based ongoing education. Hey, we're gonna pull everyone together in a zoom session. And we're going to discuss this, whether it's zoom teams, Google, meet, I don't care, just some way for people to maintain

connectivity with each other and practice these skills. So instead of showing up and saying, Here are new products, here are new capabilities, here are the features and benefits, instead remember, start with, here's this new product. Here's the demand in the marketplace that prompted us to create this. Here are the questions to ask to determine if your customers

might need this. Here's a way to start that conversation. Then we want to understand where they're getting stuck today so we can accommodate that and where we have friction in our process that makes it harder or easier to do business with us, so they're more inclined to do business with us than others. Then we want to role play these different scenarios. Give them tools to maintain connectivity with us going forward and

continue their education. See we can share all the information about product features and capabilities via video we just send out, but these types of interactions, practicing real life sales, sales scenarios, those are things that work best when everyone's in a room together, working on it, and that's where we'll invest our time. And the people who do this are driving dramatically better results than the people who

aren't. These are all concepts that we have the benefit of experiencing every month in the Same Side Selling Academy, in our Coaches Corner, where people are raising different topics, role playing them, and getting real live feedback that improve their outcomes. So if there are topics you'd like me to cover, just drop me a note to Ian at Ian altman.com We'll see you on the next episode of the Same Side Selling podcast. So long you