appreciate it at the time, but at the begining of my sales career I was blessed with an outstanding sales manager. Frank was always there, asking the right questions and keeping me focused on the goals of the day. He was also an amazing source of information, knowing just where to go for the best solutions to the many technical issues we dealt with daily.
It took me a while before I realized that not all sales managers could measure up to Frank—which means there are thousands of salespeople out there without proper leadership struggling to achieve their potential.
So I’ve been on the lookout for software tools that can fill the void left by a shortage of sales management talent. And WisdomWare Sales Coaching is the first product I’ve seen in a while that can have a real impact on sales.

ADDING VALUE TO
INFORMATION
WisdomWare Sales Coaching is an interactive software application that gives salespeople the information they need to make more effective sales calls. Plug it into any existing sales automation software, and it will provide answers to specific questions on your products and services, customer needs and the competition. It also offers sales advice, describes best sales practices and reminds your salespeople of the value propositions or other special messages you want them to be delivering consistently. What’s more, Sales Coaching includes an easy-to-use tool for capturing and sharing best sales practices so that

your company’s marketing staff can more effectively develop your product positioning and messages.
Don’t confuse this product with the simple marketing encyclopedia systems available from several other companies. WisdomWare has created a general-purpose knowledge model designed specifically for interactive coaching. The software is structured as a three-level pyramid, with each level providing users with answers to increasingly difficult types of questions. The bottom level offers Information: It includes data, descriptions and facts that answer the question, “What is it?” The middle level provides Insight: It includes ramifications, value judgments, opinions, conclusions and links to other related information, answering the question “What does it mean?” The top level offers Wisdom: It includes recommendations and advice that answer the question, “What should I do?”
The higher up the pyramid users go, the more value the knowledge they receive has. Traditional marketing docu-

ments may contain information, insight and wisdom, but they are usually tough for users to locate and extract. WisdomWare solves this problem by organizing knowledge according to these three levels. Its structure also improves the authoring and maintenance of the knowledge base, as well as access speed and enduser acceptance. WisdomWare has done one other thing with this powerful knowledge model: It has flipped the pyramid upside down to reflect the way the mind actually works. For each piece of Information, you can find multiple pieces or “chunks” of Insight and Wisdom higher up the pyramid.

MANAGING YOUR
KNOWLEDGE
WisdomWare’s patented approach to knowledge management, called Relational Knowledge Object Management (RKOM), creates a multidimensional view of your best sales and marketing knowledge. At the same time, it reinforces your key selling methodologies.

Through its powerful coaching interface, WisdomWare lets salespeople instantly access the answers they need in a way that is natural for them. If more detailed information is necessary, it links salespeople to the best “large objects” available (such as external Web sites), no matter where they are located. The software’s unique knowledge-navigation approach rapidly delivers just the right knowledge in small, rich bites that facilitate both learning and retention. Because knowledge is in the mind of the beholder and, in most cases, is fuzzy rather than precise, a good coaching system must also help people equate knowledge with answers to the specific questions they have. And the more pressing the question or need, the more valuable that knowledge must be. Furthermore, because the mind processes knowledge in small pieces, WisdomWare links information together in a relational fashion.
Traditional highend, knowledge-based technologies (such as expert systems, inference engines and case-based reasoning) are like rocket science. They consume massive amounts of intellectual resources to install, maintain and use. The WisdomWare system, on the other hand, takes a less strenuous approach: Coaching is an ongoing process of gathering and refining information, so you can begin by capturing the “important stuff” and then grow the system as you learn to manage and share newfound knowledge more effectively.
It’s natural for people to hoard knowledge and not share it, so establishing an effective knowledge-sharing and coaching environment also requires that users abandon their comfort zones. The WisdomWare system is so easy to use, however, that sales-people will find sharing more natural and will see the benefit in swapping “war stories” to improve the overall effectiveness of the team.

COMING FULL CIRCLE
To fully leverage your enterprise knowledge assets, WisdomWare employs a “closed-loop” approach that includes a complete knowledge-sharing workflow process of creation, deployment and refinement. The program is designed so that document-based technologies such as the Internet, Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange can manage 100 percent of your information in both structured and unstructured “large objects,” like Web pages, white papers, presentations and sales brochures.

Individually, these different systems may be effective for doing detailed research, when users have the time to browse through mountains of information. Too much information, however, is precisely what makes these systems ineffective when it comes to quickly delivering the knowledge that your salespeople need. The WisdomWare system eliminates this problem.
Give salespeople information, and you will help them expand their knowledge. But give them what they need to know the most—and give them some coaching customized to current demands—and you will empower them to sell better than ever.
I was lucky—I got these things from my sales manager. Now, you don’t have to depend on luck. You can get these same things from the WisdomWare Sales Coaching system.

Rich Bohn, veteran salesman and sales manager and the author of Sell More Now with Windows!, has been publishing independent reviews of sales automation software since 1985. Contact him via his Web site, www.sellmorenow.com

AT A GLANCE

WisdomWare
(888) 311-2688
www.WisdomWare.com


Pricing: Pricing is based on a one-time server fee. Average license fees for complete installations cost between $500 and $850 per salesperson, depending on the number of users.