The Apprentice 4: Week Three

The Apprentice: Week Three

The women (Capital Edge) lost last night for two big reasons: they failed to communicate to their audience (see my entry “The Apprentice: Week Two”) and they didn’t have enough product knowledge. This entry will focus on how to obtain, maintain, and communicate product knowledge.

Product Knowledge is very important. As someone who helps ministries understand what books, Bibles, and other printed materials would help them be more effective, I have about 400 SKUs (stock keeping units) or specific products to keep up with at any one time.

It could easily be a full-time job reading every word of the top backlist titles, the current list, and future releases. I don’t have enough hours in my year to read all of the current releases of my company. That doesn’t even touch the books of the competition.

But I don’t need to read every book to have product knowledge. One of my neighbors is a pharmaceutical rep. He jokingly told me that he doesn’t try the samples. I hope not. Some of his products are nuclear-based medicines for cancer patients.

What about you? What products do you represent? Are they tangible with packaging, a name, and a specific application? Or, are you in communications so your product is ethereal? For many of you, the only product you represent is yourself. (And you’d think you know all about yourself, right?) In any case, I believe these tips will help you be more effective representing your products.

OBTAINING PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE
When my customers want to know about products, they want to know seven pieces of information. I bet the same questions hold true for your products.
1. What is the name of the product?
2. What are the physical properties—size, shape, weight, etc.?
3. What is the product’s purpose?
4. Who is the product’s creator?
5. What is the product’s price?
6. What distinguishes this product against the competition?
7. So what? Why should I care about this product?

Every sales conference, I take notes on each page of our new products catalog. Our marketing team does an outstanding job of writing copy, but I fill in the blanks where our marketing team has neglected to answer one or more of the questions. For products that are going to be essential to my most important clients, I write summaries elaborating on questions 3, 6, and 7 and save them as separate Microsoft Word documents so that I can forward that information to them or print it out for a presentation.

The greatest challenge to obtaining full product knowledge is the risk of being generic. Most of the books we publish are intended to help an individual grow spiritually. When I worked at FamilyLife, all of the products we published were intended to biblically, practically help you build a godly family. The question “how” becomes very important. I try to find the uniqueness of each product. I also try to find an in depth answer to fulfill question #6.

Steve Laube taught me the most important thing about obtaining product knowledge. Steve is the former senior editor for adult non-fiction at Bethany House. He is now an author’s agent. At a writers’ conference, he talked about the art of the soundbite. A soundbite is a summary of a product in 30 words or less. The soundbite must be unique, memorable, and paint a vivid picture of the resources intent and uniqueness. I try to write a sharp soundbite for each of the top 10 books in every cycle.

Here are some examples of sharp soundbites.

Wild at Heart
A man needs a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue. Counselor John Eldredge pokes his battle sword in your spirit to shake you from your masculine passivity.

Jonah: A Very Veggie Family Adventure
Open this box and discover ten get off the couch, laugh out loud family devotions based on the book of Jonah.

MAINTAINING PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE
Our database does a good job of maintaining questions 1, 2, and 4. There are fields for trim size, number of pages, title, author, weight, case quantity, etc. However, there are no fields that maintain the answers to the other four questions. Our website, nor our image database, nor our catalogs contain the answers to all seven questions in one place.

Amazon.com comes the closest to answering all of them and I find myself using an amazon search hourly on our own products. I save each title I look up at amazon in a Favorites folder within Safari. The folder is titled “Nelson Titles” and each page is saved with ISBN, last name of author, and Title. This allows me to get to the title information quickly in the future.

The Word documents I mentioned above are saved into a folder titled after the season we’re selling. Right now, we’re selling Winter 2005. The folder on my Mac is entitled Winter 2005. Each file is saved with ISBN, last name of author, and as much of the title as possible. This allows me to search at will for the information. For example:

0785200010.Rainey.Rekindlin.doc

COMMUNICATING PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE
When writing a client about a resource, I send a catalog page or webpage. I type out the title, creator, and soundbite for the customer.

I practice the “peel the onion” approach to communicating product knowledge. I start with the title, creator, and soundbite. If the customer wants to know more, I give the “so what” answer. The others, I answer when asked or through the delivery of a webpage or catalog page.

In the process of a sale, I typically have to communicate the product knowledge on several occasions. I try to keep the emails I send so that I can send the information quickly when asked by the client or when I want to remind a client of a previous conversation. To be nice, I cut and paste the information into a new email instead of forwarding the previous email to them.

RANDOM THOUGHTS
Why didn’t the entire Capital Edge team go to the doctor when Rebecca broke her ankle? They were done with their celebration and had nothing to do while the other team was in the board room. It could have been an incredible opportunity for team building. Rebecca’s relationship to Toral was strengthened. It could have an event that strengthened the entire team.

Randal led tonight. Too bad we didn’t see more of his leadership. I still pick Randal to take the job. Hey Burnett: show more of the task and less of the interpersonal drama.

THE SCORE
Randal 1-0 (exemption)
Markus 1-0
Marshawn 1-0
Rebecca 0-1
Kristi 0-1
Chris 0-1
Excel (Men’s team) 2-1
Capital Edge (Women’s team) 1-2