What Is The Most Important Teleprospecting Skill?

My colleagues and I have worked with a number of clients over the course of our time at AG Salesworks.  Something we are constantly faced with is a client's "want" to have us understand every in and out of there technology and their "fear" that if we don't have that understanding success will not follow.

That said, I am a firm believer that in order to prospect for an opportunity, an individual must be comfortable with the product or material he/she is speaking about.

It is my experience that what is more critical than understanding every nut and bolt of a solution is the ability to have a business conversation with a target prospect.  I have to step back and define what I mean by "business conversation".  This is a conversation that has set goals a BDR/Teleprospector is looking to accomplish:

1. Uncover what is going on today? (company, technology in place, etc)
2. What are the problems that they face today or foresee in the future?(budget shrink, technology specific gaps - e.g. ERP is not robust enough for future growth, etc)
3. How do they envision fixing the problems and when?

If the goals of this "business conversation" are met, a BDR/Teleprospector should be able to disposition the target prospect "in" or "out" as an opportunity.

Now product knowledge is important but there are pieces that fall higher on the list.  Being able to understand what areas a product can help, who the target is, what concerns the target has in their role (CIO versus Systems Administrator), objections a BDR/Teleprospector will face and how to overcome them, and finally perhaps most importantly is a high level understanding of the space the solution fits in (e.g. Virtualization - what is it, why people doing it, etc)

Armed with this type of background, I think that the skill set to listen and digest what you are hearing and think on your feet, and not every minute detail on a solution/service the BDR/Teleprospector is calling on, is what will lead them to finding potential forcastable revenue.

What other skills do you think are important for a teleprospector to possess?