Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Capturing and Leveraging Tribal Knowledge

What is Tribal Knowledge?

Tribal knowledge is any unwritten information that is not commonly known by others within a company. This term is used most when referencing information that may need to be known by others in order to produce quality product or service.”

Translated, this typically means that someone has the knowledge, and (in theory) passes it along to others in need.  However, tribal knowledge fails in an organization when (1) people leave without communicating what they know or (2) those with the knowledge assume that others have it as well (when they don’t) or (3) those with the knowledge don’t even think about passing it along…

How can modern sales and presales teams capture and leverage valuable Tribal Knowledge?

Consider the last sales kickoff meeting you went to. It is likely there was a combination of formal knowledge sharing (e.g., sales success stories segments) and informal sharing (e.g., at the bar, “Hey, Bob, what did you do in that demo for xxx that worked so well?”).  The formal sessions are not a concern – but many “nuggets” likely can be gathered from the informal interactions.

Accordingly, contemplate implementing a formal segment in your upcoming sales kickoff meeting and/or your team’s regular conference calls that asks the members to each share one idea or learning they experienced recently.  These sessions can be free-form or structured to focus on Discovery, demos, sales strategy, or other specific topics.


Other suggestions?

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