Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is not formally codified through documentation. In large organizations with distributed sales forces, it can in fact, form the bulk of the knowledge held by its customer-facing employees (also known as ‘tribal knowledge’). It consists of intuitive knowledge such as reading a customer’s attitude, predicting whether they will buy or not, being able to modify one’s sales pitch as the situation evolves, and so on. Tacit knowledge is thus essential for the topline - for it directly influences how many pitches convert to sales (effectiveness). It is more often than not gained by a long experience of work in the field.

Tacit knowledge is hard to codify, because it is often non-verbal, and rarely constant over time. It is passed on from senior representatives to juniors via informal interactions, and consists of both verbal and non-verbal cues. This information is hard to write down, often because the holder of the information is not even conscious about it, or cannot articulate it. However, as organizations have switched to remote working during the pandemic, the sharing of knowledge through such informal meetings has stopped. The need to codify this knowledge, so that rookie sellers can learn fast and in the absence of regular mentors, is thus acute.

Formal knowledge sharing systems or learning management systems are focussed on overt, codifiable knowledge, such as product features, customer benefits and so on. They may also manage to capture other necessary information, such as tactics to overcome customer objections. Many sales enablement platforms are focussed on optimizing the delivery of formal knowledge, so that salespersons on the field are not handicapped for the lack of the latest product updates and collateral. However, a great deal of tacit knowledge passes ‘under the radar’.

Organizations have tried to assimilate tribal knowledge into the formal organizational knowledge base through various tactics - such as one-to-one mentorship, creating internal social networks through platforms such as Flock and Slack, regular soft skills training and through creating multi-disciplinary groups that can learn from their members. However, the most important ingredient in creating a successful system of sharing tacit knowledge is to create a culture for it. Salespersons are more willing to share their private insights into customer behaviour when they know that knowledge is appreciated.

To build sharpsell, the founders shadowed hundreds of salespersons to find out best practices of field sales that could be incorporated. Making this tribal knowledge available both vertically and horizontally across the organization makes a sales enablement platform truly helpful for the field representative. A few of their expectations are as follows, gleaned from listening to sales representatives as they made their pitches:

1. Picking customer cues. Over a sales call, a sharp enough representative can pick embedded signals that a customer may be favourable to a particular product or feature. They must then be able to manoeuvre the sales conversation and quickly produce a customized flyer or presentation that highlights what the customer is interested in.
2. Keeping pace with evolving customer expectations. An opening pitch that worked a week earlier may no longer be effective; representatives look to their colleagues to see who has ‘cracked’ it.
3. Asking for references. A satisfied customer is always happy to provide references of prospective customers, but knowing when to ask is crucial. This is knowledge that only comes from experience.
4. Only Handling customer objections. Often during training, young salespersons are told that there are only three objections that matter - “I’m not interested”, “I don’t have time” or “I cannot afford it”. It’s only field experience that exposes the seller to various nuances of objections, and they fall back on the tribal knowledge of their peers for answers. Effective sales enablement should be able to provide them with this collective wisdom without having to actually call up someone, or say to the client, “let me get back to you on this”.

One solution has been to create AI-based role plays that expose a sales representative to novel objections or customer expectations. Yet another is to create hundreds of bite-sized learning videos, that the representative can engage with at their own pace, and learn from the recorded experience of their colleagues. A third is to provide channels for sales representatives to connect with their mentors for guidance, and also to share their own experiences with colleagues. A benefit of these approaches is that the tacit knowledge is not centralized with a few sales managers but immediately available to all representatives at all times.

sharpsell equips sales reps with personalized content to engage with customers and customized presentations to share with customers as per their needs. All the content is accessible through a single source - the sharpsell platform. Companies using  have seen an increase in sales productivity with higher number of products sold, higher ticket size, increased visibility on prospecting, reduced content creation cost, reduced time to first sale, reduced costs of training, and uncovering insights on product feedback.