Learning your product inside and out

There are many ways to learn a product. You can learn it from the engineering perspective...for example...how it is designed internally? You can learn a product from the user's point of view...for example...what does each menu option do? You can learn a product from the manufacturer's perspective...for example...what is the profit margin? There are many other examples of how to learn about a product...each of these methods involves a different method of learning. As a Sales Engineer..."Trusted Advisor"...I have found that what has served me well is learning the product from the perspective of the benefits it delivers to the people who buy it (and use it). When go about the process of learning a product...I continually have two questions in my mind..."What are the biggest business problems that this particular aspect of the product can solve"?...and secondly..."Will the user's actually be able to use it"? The reason I need to know what problems the product solves...is because I am going to look for these problems within all the prospective companies that I encounter. I am going to use the solution to these problems as the basis of the product presentation and demonstration to the perspecive company. The reason I want to know about the usability...is because if the features do not have a high probability of being used successfully...it greatly diminishes the likelihood that the product benefits will be fully realized. My focus on selling a product is to sell it to really improve the way a business operates (by the way...the focus here is really on the prospective customer's customer...see my earlier blog post on this point). If you do this successfully, you get something that is very important to the sales process...and that is confidence. Confidence and belief in your proposed solution. If you have done your job correctly...sometime during the sales process...usually during the demonstration...your confidence is transferred to the buyer. And when that happens...everyone wins!