23 Sep
How Sales Teams Can Use Knowledge Management to Their Advantage
Time is of the essence for sales teams. With many teams now split up around the globe, communication between sales team members is more challenging. The pandemic has thrown a wrench into the works in terms of how all kinds of teams work together, and sales teams are no different.
With sales teams more stretched than ever, companies need a way to promote healthy knowledge management and knowledge sharing techniques. Members of the team should no longer have to waste time searching for relevant information.
In response to that, many sales team leaders are working to set up a central knowledge platform for their teams to work from. This means that members can dip into the knowledge platform – anytime – to pick up the information they need to get more sales across the line.
A team that’s split up geographically is going to need to put extra work into improving communication. We’ve already written about making sure your message reaches everyone in the team, and this is a great place to start understanding how to implement effective knowledge management across teams.
How important is knowledge management in sales?
To better understand why effective knowledge management solutions are important to sales teams, we should start by understanding what problems are caused by knowledge hiding.
What is knowledge hiding and how does it affect knowledge management?
Perceived knowledge hiding occurs when members of a team keep information to themselves, either purposefully or accidentally. Broadly, knowledge hiding tends to occur when the hider wants to gain an individual advantage over other team members by keeping crucial knowledge to themselves.
In sales, this behavior might be more prevalent than in other settings. In a field that has traditionally rewarded the highest individual salespeople on a team, it is understandable that some members might be reluctant to participate in knowledge management that involves information being shared.
The way around this issue, then, could be to introduce team-based rewards and limit individual accolades for sales. If a sales team is working towards one joint goal, every member will have more motivation to share important information with each other.
How can a strong knowledge management strategy positively impact your sales team?
There have been numerous studies looking at the impact of knowledge management on the performance of sales teams.
Efforts were made to find out which behaviors could positively influence KSBC (knowledge-sharing behavior capability). A direct relationship was discovered between KSBC and the presence of a ‘supportive and innovative organisational culture’. Essentially, if an organisation takes steps to support knowledge management and encourage new discoveries, its members will be more inclined to share their knowledge with each other.
It has also been found that a willingness to share knowledge comes with a couple of prerequisites:
- A sense of wellbeing. Ensuring your team of salespeople is motivated and well-rested is key to cultivating a culture of knowledge management.
- Ability to absorb IT-based knowledge. Every team member should feel comfortable communicating and sharing knowledge through the available IT platforms. They should be friendly and easy to use.
The second point above takes us into a deeper exploration of how sales teams can rely on IT-based solutions to boost their knowledge management efforts
Should you use a knowledge management platform for your sales team?
So, now that you know that an effective knowledge management solution is vital to the success of a sales team, where can you start?
There are so many ways a sales team can use a platform like Elium to make knowledge management and knowledge sharing central to its success.
Here’s how a knowledge management platform can help a sales team to make more sales and become a more efficient unit:
- Having a centralised collection of your team’s best marketing and sales material is game-changing. Instead of continually needing to fact-check and find out if information is up to date, your sales team can depend on an online library of updated marketing information they can use when working with prospective clients.
- Add information and documents about previous requests and interactions with clients. This side of knowledge management is great for mutualising efforts inside a sales team and ensuring that everyone has visibility on the most important knowledge about clients.
- Upload key information on competitors in your field. Your sales team will no longer need to guess at what other competitors might be doing: Use pre-defined templates to add critical information about competitors and have them at hand in an instant.
- The leader of the sales team is able to have access to analytics that show the most searched-for pieces of content in your knowledge base. This can aid your knowledge management efforts by allowing you to sort trending information to the top.
- Create a full training library, complete with everything from videos to sales scripts. Your sales team will be learning and working quicker than ever!
A 360-degree knowledge management solution for sales teams
Elium offers everything we mentioned above, and more.
When you request a demo with Elium, you’re putting your sales team one big step closer to working alongside an intelligent knowledge management solution. Remote or hybrid teams can have quick access to information without spending hours looking for it, and they can work together to capitalise on leads without keeping their knowledge to themselves.
If you’re ready to make life undeniably easier for your sales team, give Elium a try today.
