An excellent way to find out what’s going on inside a company — and possibly where a company is headed in terms of new products or markets — is to look at its job postings.
For example, if a company is advertising for an engineer who speaks Mandarin, it’s a pretty good bet the company is entering the China market. If the company is looking for a sales representative or marketing person with specific industry experience, you can safely guess that the company is going to start selling its products and services to that market. If a company is looking for someone with expertise using a specific technology, it's a pretty safe bet that the organization has purchased, or will be purchasing, that product.
In addition to gaining insight into a company, reviewing job postings is a great way to discover a sales "trigger event."
In sales, a "trigger event" means "why would someone take your sales call today, vs. three weeks ago they would have hung up the phone."
In many industries, a "trigger event" occurs when a new executive is hired. Why? Because many times, a few weeks after an executive is hired, that individual wants to prove her worth and so she may evaluate existing vendors contracts. Or he may be open to new solutions to show how smart he is and why he is a good hire.
One of the most comprehensive online information sources for job postings is Indeed.com, because it’s actually a meta-search engine of job posting sites. Indeed produces search results by pulling from all the major job search engines such as Monster and Career Builder and directly from company job postings.
Indeed helps you look into the future of what a company will be doing, the people it will be hiring and when, etc. Then you can identify the challenges the company may soon face (or is now facing) and determine if your company has a solution to solve those problems. In a sense, Indeed helps you build a sales pipeline before the pipeline even exists!
Following are seven easy steps to building your future sales pipeline:
Visit Indeed's Advanced Search feature.
To search a specific company, enter the company name into the search form. You can also include a state, city, or zip code.
If you receive too many results, re-run your search but this time enter other terms, e.g., marketing or operations.
To see what companies in a specific geographic region are using a technology or piece of equipment, use Advanced Search and this time, enter the phrase "experience with X" (with X being the technology or equipment), and limit your search by geography. For example, if your company specializes in working with firms that use Salesforce as their customer relationship management software, enter "experience with Salesforce" in the "this exact phrase" field and then enter a geographic area.
Your results will show companies in that region that mention Salesforce as a job requirement.
To search for companies looking to hire an executive, in Advanced Search enter a job title, additional terms if you'd like (e.g., industry terms), and a geographic region. You may want to exclude staffing agencies. To limit your search further, enter in a salary range on the higher end, e.g., $100k - $700k.
On the results page you'll find companies that you know will be hiring an executive in the coming weeks/months. Put that company on your list for a future call.
Here is the problem with Indeed. Because the list of job posting is constantly changing, you need to run the above searches every day. Who is going to remember to do that?
Here is the solution with Indeed -- email alerts. Following a search, if you're happy with the results, locate the “Get New Jobs By Email” form. Enter your email address and any time Indeed finds a new job posting featuring your terms, you’ll receive it via email.
If you’re a salesperson, set up an Indeed email alert on your most important prospects. Based on the type of individual the company is looking for, you can tailor your sales calls and presentations. Set up an automatic lead generator by entering the product, technology, or service that your company enhances and Indeed will email you when a company is looking for someone with knowledge of that product or service. Set up an alert so you know anytime a company in your region is hiring a new decision maker.
If you’re an account manager, set up an Indeed email alert on your clients’ competitors. Send your client a note when its competitor is looking to hire someone with specific talents and experience. Or, set up an Indeed email alert on your client and when the client is looking to hire someone, make a referral from your network. Who do you think will get the next contract if that individual is hired?
It’s easy to build a sales pipeline before the pipeline even exists, now that you Know More.
Author: Sam Richter, CSP, CPAE National Speaker Hall of Fame | Top 50 Sales Keynote Presenters | Bestselling Author
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