Does Your Outsourced Sales Partner Understand Your Technical Product?

For manufacturers of technical products, this is one of the first concerns when considering outsourced sales: will an external salesperson really understand what we do? It’s a legitimate question, as the more complex the product, the greater the risk of approaching the wrong companies, misreading an application, or losing credibility once the conversation turns technical.

My own career started on the technical side, as an automotive mechatronics technician, before I moved into sales. Today, after more than ten years in sales and six years developing global key accounts and new markets at PBS Sales, I still approach a new product the same way: before thinking about how to sell it, I want to understand how it works, where it creates value, and where its limitations are.

Product knowledge alone isn’t enough

Being able to explain every feature doesn’t make someone effective in technical sales. The salesperson has to connect the technology to the customer’s actual situation. In one PBS Sales project, I worked with an intralogistics software provider offering an AI-supported solution for controlling fleets of automated guided vehicles and autonomous mobile robots. Before approaching potential customers, we had to understand which companies had a suitable application, how mature their intralogistics environment was, and which decision-makers actually mattered. Only then does product knowledge become commercially useful.

Listen to the questions they ask

One of the simplest ways to assess a potential sales partner is to watch what they ask during onboarding. Do they mainly request brochures, prices, and target lists? Or do they want to understand applications, existing customers, competing technologies, integration requirements, and why customers choose your solution? A good technical salesperson won’t understand everything on day one. I’d actually be cautious of anyone who claims they do. What matters is the ability to learn fast, ask precise questions, and recognise where deeper expertise is needed.

Technical credibility matters to the customer

This isn’t just my experience. A 2025 study by Industrial Equipment News and R.H. Blake, surveying more than 250 manufacturing executives and managers involved in purchases with long sales cycles, found that sales and application engineers ranked among their top five information sources when researching major equipment purchases.

That makes sense to me. Technical sales sits between two worlds: the customer needs someone who understands the commercial objective, but the conversation also has to hold up technically.

Know when to bring in the engineer

Outsourced technical sales shouldn’t try to replace the manufacturer’s technical experts. In another PBS Sales project involving passive exoskeletons, product training was an important part of preparing for the market. We needed the engineers to help us understand the technology well enough to identify suitable industries and applications and explain a relatively new product credibly to potential customers.

Technical competence means recognising the limits of your own knowledge. A salesperson needs to know what they can answer confidently and when a question requires deeper expertise from the manufacturer.

Look for understanding, not just industry keywords

Industry experience helps, but I wouldn’t evaluate a sales partner solely on whether they’ve sold the exact same product before. Technical markets move too fast for that. Instead, look for four things: can they understand the application, ask the right questions, recognise the limits of their own knowledge, and know when to involve technical expertise? Your outsourced salesperson doesn’t need to replace your engineers, they need to understand enough of your technology to spot a real opportunity, represent your company credibly, and move the conversation forward.

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