The essence of what I teach is that, when it comes to buying, people are amazingly passionate about one thing: themselves. So, in every meeting and sales call, it's imperative that you spend most of your time talking about them versus you. What do you know about them prior to the meeting, so you can ask intelligent, and sometimes even challenging, questions on what they care about?
When conducting pre-call preparation, we all know to review someone's website prior to a meeting. The good salesperson also takes time to review the prospect's LinkedIn profile along with conducting a news search on the company using Google News or www.YouGotTheNews.com.
The great salesperson takes it one step further. They research the prospect's industry and understand the trends and issues that the prospect cares about.
How do you make researching an industry easy? Check out www.YouGotResearch.com
In YouGotResearch, use the pull-down menu to select a date option. Enter a word in the first Title field if you want to limit your results to just reports with that word in the title (so fewer yet more relevant results). Or broaden your search by entering your term within the industry field.
Click on any of the buttons to find industry trends, survey results, industry outlooks and even other people's PowerPoint presentations. All results will be in a downloadable file that you can email, attach to a LinkedIn message, and/or print.
Use solid information sources to differentiate in a sales call. In any meeting, sales proposal, presentation or in a response to a formal request for proposal, citing credible industry research will show that you’ve done your homework and that you care.
Author: Sam Richter, CSP, CPAE National Speaker Hall of Fame | Top 50 Sales Keynote Presenters | Bestselling Author
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