Using insights to sell is exactly the right thing to do. However, it's all about the execution. Recently I spoke with an executive who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars with two major consulting firms to develop insight to be used by their sales teams in customer conversations. The sales team however felt the data was a bit above their pay grade. That executive then hired a marketing communications firm and invested over 500 hours of senior leadership time to white board the insight such that sales could actually use it. This same executive estimates that after all this, only 50% of his salesforce is going to be able to execute the strategy.

Aberdeen Group just reported that "insight needs to be job relevant and intuitive to use in order to drive adoption and engagement." Without a doubt, a knowledge based approach to selling is the only way to compete to sell at the speed of change today. The knowledge just needs to be at the right level for both your sales teams and customers. 

For more info, take a look at these articles.