“If they’ve sold a similar product, they must have the knowledge to succeed.”

Not necessarily.

A meta-analysis of 268 studies covering over 80,000 salespeople found:

• Product knowledge is the strongest predictor of sales performance
• Experience is one of the weakest

And yet — most interviews rely on experience as a stand-in for product knowledge.

Here’s the problem:

• Product knowledge can come from experience —
  but it’s not equivalent to it
• Someone can work in an industry for years
  without ever deeply understanding the product or buyer
• Resumes show where they’ve been —
  not what they’ve learned or how they apply it

So what should you be hiring for?

Not where they’ve worked —
But how they learn, what they retain, and how they use it to sell

That’s what actually predicts success.

How do you assess product knowledge in interviews?