The Most Neglected Issue In Sales

What sales professionals can learn from master teachers

Back when I was a classroom teacher, I noticed that many teachers ignored the Hierarchy of Knowledge. If you're unfamiliar with the Hierarchy of Knowledge, think of it as the Order of Operations. Back in grade school, if you had to solve 5 + 4 x 3, you learned that you had to multiply first, then add. Otherwise, you got an answer of 27 instead of 17.

The Hierarchy of Knowledge states that there are certain key concepts one must learn before tackling more complex concepts. In order to comprehend the concept of ‘birthday’, one must first understand ‘birth’ and then ‘day’. Otherwise, ‘birthday’ holds no conceptual value.

Generally speaking, teachers are good at adhering to the Hierarchy of Knowledge for analytical subjects like math but tend to drop it with more intuitive subjects such as social science. When you try to teach complex concepts without ensuring that students have the required background knowledge, your students are likely to become confused, frustrated and reticent to learn. Which is why I believe the Hierarchy of Knowledge to be one of the most neglected issues in Education.

Interestingly, when I transitioned to Sales, I noticed the same issue with sales professionals in two key areas: industry knowledge and sales methodology. The two pillars of any successful sales professional.

The Hierarchy of Industry Knowledge

Every industry, just like every school subject, has its core knowledge that everyone in the industry knows. It includes industry-specific terminology, expressions, concepts and even beliefs. Without that knowledge, a sales professional is lost. Even worse, she will never gain the prospect's trust. If you don't speak the prospect’s lingo, you will be considered an outsider and will be refused entry into the industry’s circle of trust and will constantly bump up against the infamous Zone of Resistance.

How do you gain entry? You learn the industry's core knowledge. The best way to learn it is not to search the internet but rather, to speak with existing clients. Sure, as a starting point, begin with a Google search but to truly understand the life of a prospect in your industry, you must speak with your clients (and your prospects). They hold the key to unravelling the Hierarchy of Knowledge of your chosen industry.

The Hierarchy of Sales Methodology

In and of itself, Sales has its own Hierarchy of Knowledge, its own order of operations. There's a sequence to the sales process that too many sales professionals try to circumvent or leapfrog. Whether consciously or not, many try to go from A to C without going through B. The most common sales process looks something like this:?

Too often, a sales representative will create a deal without fully vetting if the prospect is a good fit (step 3). To determine if a prospect is a good fit, the sales representative needs to have some sort of a conversation with the prospect to validate the prospect’s needs. From that conversation, the sales rep can then garner and glean from the prospect and then check off all the criteria required to confirm that the prospect is a good fit and thus, a deal should be created (and not before).

This process of qualification is so crucial that a multitude of sales models have been put forth in the market including Solution Selling, MEDDIC and SPIN. Without a sales model or methodology, the sales representative is working in a vacuum and is doomed to fail. These sales models essentially systematize the Hierarchy of Knowledge inherent in the sales process. In one way or another, they attempt to keep the sales representative on track in the same way that the Order of Operations keeps the math student on track with an equation.

What any Hierarchy of Knowledge informs us is that acquiring knowledge is a process. Whether you are learning math, a sales methodology or industry-specific insights, there is an inherent order to how you acquire knowledge and on the flip side, there is an inherent order to how you transmit knowledge both to students and to prospects. If you circumvent this order or leapfrog over certain key concepts, you do so at your own peril. The best teachers and the best sales professionals are those who have internalized how to adhere to the Hierarchy of Knowledge.

Industry knowledge and sales methodology are the two pillars of any sales professional’s Hierarchy of Knowledge which is why I like to refer to my personal sales approach as HierSales. Acquiring your Hierarchy of Knowledge is a process that requires time, discipline and perseverance. But you must have a process in place to acquire your industry’s knowledge and then, you can apply your chosen sales methodology to the solution you are proposing to the industry.

To be clear, acquiring your Hierarchy of Knowledge is not a one-time event, it’s a process, as I discuss in Those Who Can - an ongoing and iterative process that will ultimately lead to mastery. The most accomplished master teachers and sales professionals are those who trust their process for acquiring industry and sales knowledge, which is why I’ll state in conclusion: just like in Education, the most neglected issue in sales is the Hierarchy of Knowledge. To succeed in sales, you must have a firm grasp of the core knowledge of your industry AND you must have internalized your sales methodology - in essence, you must have what I refer to as HierSales.

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