Today, I’m excited to talk about the top 8 ways to win with knowledge. Whether you’re in sales, business development, or you’re a business owner in general, you can never be satisfied with your current knowledge. You need to focus on constant improvement and learning in order to stay at the top of your profession. So, I identified 8 ways to do just that. Here you go:
1. Product or service knowledge. You’ve probably memorized the features of your products or services by now, but even more importantly, do you truly understand the benefits? Another question would be, are you using your own product or service, if applicable? It’s important because you can’t know it inside out until you experience it yourself.
2. Knowledge of your target market. Specifically, this is about understanding the demographics, geographics, and psychographics of where your target market lies. Also, how do you go deeper with this group? Maybe you can spend some time socially with them in order to understand their fears and wants.
3. Industry knowledge. What is the history of your industry? Where did it start? How long has it been around? What’s going on right now in the industry? What are the trends?
4. Competition. In what ways is your competition currently better than you? What are they doing to try to take you down? What is their unique selling proposition, and what do you do better than them? Understand what your internal strengths and weaknesses are. Also, as we look at competition, what are some ways that you can team up? How can you become alliance partners, where you can actually share referrals with each other?
5. Sales skills in general. I’ve written a lot about topics such as overcoming sales objections, the BASS sales model, etc. These are the types of skills you have to keep honing over time.
6. General skills. How do you become a clearer and more effective communicator? How do you improve your technological skills?
7. General knowledge. What’s going on in your city, state, or country? What’s happening? What are the current trends that you observe? What are things that you need to be aware of in order to better serve your clients?
8. Knowledge of yourself. What are your true strengths, and how can you maximize them? Also, what are some areas where you fall short? What are some fears or limiting beliefs that hold you back? You must identify them and figure out how they can be overcome. How can you live out what motivates you to produce the best results?
These are the 8 ways that knowledge can help you get ahead in business. So, what I want to encourage you to do is choose one of these areas every week or month to work on. Keep learning, and constantly improve your knowledge base. Take action today.
