Increasingly "knowledge" & its knowledge, is becoming the key difference between the organisations for survival & growth. With more & more products/services being offered are similar, "Knowledge" behind these products/services is the key differentiator for a buyer.

Organisation are facing a serious challenge to manage, document, & make available the explosive growth of knowledge. This challenge is more evident in sales & marketing department.The management struggles to make available "knowledge" to the front end of the organisation, where decision for survival & growth are made. Here its observed that few experienced ones rarely share the knowledge, with a fear of losing control. It leads to a situation where individuals learn but organisation don't.

A typical sales - marketing executive needs to have knowledge about the customer, its decision making process & the people, the way his product/service will be used, true value of his offering to various decision makers, buyers knowledge/experience of competitive products/service etc. This is apart from having knowledge about, the organisation he represents, its experience, success & failures.

It is observed, many times the requisite "knowledge" resides somewhere deep in the organisation. It is not available when desperately needed, but accidentally discovered when the time for its need is not there. I would not be too bold to say "Many organisation don't know what they know" !

I have seen many times a situation, where the sales person representing, say a 25 year old organisation behaves like a newly born! His behaviour, type of questions he asks, the way he communicates, and his presentation do not reflect the 25 years of experience. This happens simply because he doesn't know what he (the organisation he represents) knows ! His superiors have failed in sharing the knowledge gained from the past 25 years of customer & market interactions.

As "knowledge" is becoming the crucial difference, "Knowledge management" has become an important issue. What is "knowledge management" ? Well, there can be number of definitions (depending on whom you ask!). However in a layman's language it means - A process to identify, acquire, develop, share, utilise & retain the "knowledge".

In the coming articles for the next few months, we shall see how a sales organisation can deploy "knowledge management" for its survival & growth.

Meanwhile, you can ask yourself the following questions to understand how do you deal with your knowledge;

1-What knowledge do I possess?
2-What skills do I have?
3-Why do I not pass them to others?
4-How can I enhance my knowledge?