Inside Sales Lead Management Featured Article

It sounds like a no-brainer: investigate sales prospects and find all relevant information before you go into a sales call, so you (as a salesperson) can sound educated. Unfortunately, it’s shocking how few sales professionals do it. Prospects who believe that a sales person knows nothing about him/her or the organization isn’t going to impressed enough to want to hand over part of a valuable budget. If you can’t do a bit of basic research, will you be good for follow-up after the purchase? It seems unlikely.

In a recent blog post for Insurance News Net, Steve Morelli describes the advice of sales coach and author Sam Richter, who recommends turning to Google (News - Alert) for some basic education before a sales call.

“He advocates using Web searches to know your prospect, so it’s never a cold call,” writes Morelli. “You go into a meeting ready to have a real conversation. Instead of asking how many employees a prospect’s business has, you can say, ‘I saw that you have 45 people working for you, is that right?’ Then he or she can agree or correct you, but you are starting with an assumption of some knowledge, rather than, ‘This salesperson knows nothing about me and expects me to trust him.’”

It’s a good point. A salesperson who can’t be bothered to do footwork – particularly when it’s so easy in the era of Web sites and search engines – is not likely to be an effective partner going forward. This advice is particularly critical in the earliest days of the sales relationship, when a salesperson is trying to build a new relationship. It applies to sales relationships that happen over the telephone (or via any other channel) or in face-to-face selling settings.

It’s also important to do it the right way, and investigate the organization, and not the individual. The latter could come across as socially awkward, according to Morelli.

“Once you’ve gathered your background, how do you unveil it? You could easily come off a little ‘stalkery’ if you just start whipping out details, especially if you got them from Facebook (News - Alert) (don’t do that, by the way).”

Personal information on the prospect isn’t taboo, just understand when a little can go a long way and understand what’s fair game – information revealed on a LinkedIn (News - Alert) profile about previous employers or schools attended, for example – and what’s not: a recent divorce, a family problem, a personal relationship or anything related to physical appearance. (In other words, “Wow, you’ve lost a lot of weight since that picture on your profile was taken!” should be a no-go at all times.)

Efforts should be kept to a preset time schedule – in other words, don’t waste a day researching personal details about your prospect, or it becomes counterproductive and erases the benefits – but a healthy amount of effort shows interest and initiative. And that may be just what you need to make the sale.