How to Expedite the Product Knowledge Process
Knowing about what you sell. That’s sales 101. However, if you’re selling a SaaS product, that can be a long difficult process.
I was able to land my first SDR role at a SaaS company called Baremetrics. We sell subscription analytics. As a person who isn’t savvy with technology, it has taken me a while to learn the ins and outs of our product and the benefits that come along with using it.
Learning it is still an ongoing process.
Nonetheless, there have been a few areas I looked when educating myself on our product that helped me when in discovery meetings, demos, and responding to prospects’ questions.
Here are a couple places I’d look when you land a sales role to expedite the product knowledge process:
Read Your Company Blog
Admittedly, this can be a boring place to be. This is also one of the most important places to be.
Looking at your company blog will give you more knowledge about your industry, what’s important to customers, use cases, etc.
Being able to look at your company through a buyer’s lens can help you pay attention to what you should be focusing on. My company offers a complete content library which is organized to what our customers are looking to learn and attain from our services. For example, being able to reduce churn is important to our customers. That’s why there’s a section dedicated to learning how to reduce churn through Baremetrics like in this article Revenue Churn: How to Calculate, Track, and Improve.
When a customer wants to discuss churn, I now know how to speak their language and what’s important to them which will help me better assist them.
Watch Demos
This might not be available to all SDRs, but if you have access to demos TAKE ADVANTAGE. This will help you gain a sense for how your demo should be structured. Also, you’ll develop a general idea of which questions you should be prepared to answer/ask.
Talk to existing customers
Where do you look to learn more about how and why your customers are using your product?
Your existing customers.
If you can, you should be emailing existing customers and try to pick their brains. Not just any customers though. Try to focus on your best customers. Some common traits to help you identify the best customers can be their longevity with using your product, the price plan they’re typically on, type of company, etc.
Not only will you learn more about why people are using your product, but it will eventually help you develop a target demographic for outbound outreach!
After you compile enough responses, you should be able to understand some similarities in terms of customers’ pain points. Document the similarities and share with your sales team.
Here’s an example of how I contact existing customers:
Ask Questions!
There are going to be customers constantly asking new questions that you probably don’t know. Don’t pretend to know the question, ask someone who does! For instance, I’m continuously asking my support team product questions.
Be careful though, you don’t want to keep bugging them. If you could learn something through personal research, then do it! When they tell you something specific, keep it in an ongoing file somewhere like Notion, Google Docs, etc.
This also applies to dealing with customers. When having a meeting with a prospect, ask a lot of questions. If they want to use your product for a specific reason, ask why. This will help you learn more about why that feature/benefit is important to customers which will allow you to help customers down the line.
In Conclusion
You probably will never know your product a 100%. After a month as an SDR, I’m still scratching the surface. However, had I followed the outline above, I would’ve been on a fast track to learn more a lot sooner.
Here’s a quick review on what you should do:
- Read Your Company Blog
- Watch Demos
- Talk to Existing Customers
- Ask Questions
Rinse and Repeat!
