I was reading an excellent book by Tim Sanders called, Love is the Killer App. In it he talks about the value that you bring people, personally and professionally.

For so long we’ve been talking about “communicating value.” I still believe that in professional sales it is the “difference maker” between the elite sellers and the amateurs.

In “Love,” Sanders says that knowledge is value. This ties in perfectly with our belief that to be a high achieving sales professional you have to be a “go-to resource” for your prospect community. You can’t just be a hand looking for an order all the time (even though monthly and quarterly quotas dictate that behavior).

Knowledge Acquisition
So what is your plan for “knowledge acquisition?” And just why do you need to be an expert in order to have a position of authority with prospects and customers? The answer? Google.

Recently I wrote a piece called “The Googlization of Your Business,” which implies that if you‘re not looking at Google and how Google searches, then you’re missing business opportunities.

You see, Google is the ultimate selector of authority. You don’t get a top ranking in Google just by throwing up a web page. You get it by being referred by other websites and by being an “authority figure.”

If I’m looking for a commercial realtor in Miami and I Google “commercial realtor,” Google helps me filter out all of the non-authority sites/people and get to the people who are recognized as good resources. (It doesn’t mean that great realtors don’t show up on page 110.)

And because our society is becoming Googlized (a verb describing the automatic filtering out of non-essential choices) then you should look for the same thing to happen in the sales process.

You As Contributor of Knowledge
So the bottom line question is: Are you a valuable contributor of knowledge to the customer due to your authority stature and are you constantly working on your acquisition of knowledge to help keep you there? If not, shame on you, because your customers are expecting no less from you if they’re to reward you with relationships.

“But Bill, how do I do that if I think of myself as merely a sales person?” Well if you think of yourself that way, you won’t do it, because you don’t feel it’s your role to be an authority figure. The only role you see is to satisfy managements demand for “making quota.”

We’ll take up the “how” in a post some time soon.