Expertise is a popular selling point used by B2B sales and marketing. More specifically, it's expertise regarding that particular industry. It demonstrates a level of familiarity among marketers when they engage with possible accounting prospects. It demonstrates the knowledge of a salesperson when they're pursuing accounting leads.
Well, before you consider looking for even more specialist candidates, you might want to read this article from Forbes. The subject deals with both specialists and generalists in the business world. More importantly, it might give you some food for thought and reasons to give the generalist approaches another chance:
“'We’ve become a society that’s data rich and meaning poor,' he says. 'A rise in specialists in all areas—science, math, history, psychology—has left us with tremendous content but how valuable is that knowledge without context?' Context, he says, which can only be provided by generalists whose breadth of knowledge can serve as the link between the hard-won scientific breakthroughs (think the recent Higgs-Boson discovery) and the rest of the world.”
It could be that forging that link can be just as important as pure expertise. For example:
- An outsourced telemarketing firm may not be able to fully grasp the finer points of your analyst techniques but they can use their general understanding and mold it into a message that's not only clear but very relevant to your target decision makers.
- When you're pursuing sales leads placed in your CRM, the information you first deemed as too general can act as the starting point of your discussion in a scheduled appointment. That in turn could lead to a deeper discussion with a prospect and give you insight that can help close the deal.
Speaking of which, different perspectives are another thing that general knowledge can provide, at least according to the article:
“After collecting more than 80,000 forecasts he concluded that when seeking accurate predictions, the non-experts were the best bet. It’s better, he said, to turn to those who “know many things, draw from an eclectic array or traditions and accept ambiguity and contradictions” than so-called experts. Relying on a single perspective, he found, was problematic, even detrimental to predicting an accurate outcome.”
You might be knowledgeable about the technical workings of accounting services but that might not be the same for your market. You might have greater need for people who can see things from their perspective rather than that of the experts.
This doesn't mean that expert opinion should be shunned. In fact, it could only mean that you'll need one as much as the other to complete the big picture. Why not go back and reconsider those marketers and salespeople with 'general knowledge'? They might have the other half of it.
