Once you start doing thorough research you will achieve much better results. In simple terms you have to consider research as an investment in your future prosperity.
Here are some tips for researching telephone sales prospects.
Visit the corporate Web site
On the company’s Web site, you can find plenty about its services and products. Check for information about the senior managers. Often, their phone number and e-mail addresses are listed. Review the mission value statements. Quickly read any recent press releases (ideally published in the past three to six months).
Don’t put too much value on company-issued press releases. Press releases, in most cases, tend to be positive. Most are written to position their company as a leader in their field. You may want to check an independent source to verify this information
Search online
Checking up on a company via an Internet search engine brings up references on other Web sites. Read a few articles about the company in third-party publications (although you’re likely to see a regurgitation of the same press releases you discovered on the company’s Web site). Find out whether others are critical or whether the company has some public relations issues. Be sure to check the date — an article that’s 3 years old may not depict the present state of the company.
You may also come across the sites of competitors in your Internet search. Frequently, other companies buy ads around their competition’s search-engine traffic. So find out what’s up with the competition — you may even identify some future prospects!
Research your contact
Finally, research your company contact by typing the name into an Internet search engine. Of course, you may find information about them on the corporate Web site.
When you type the name into a search engine, you bring up references both professional and personal. You’re likely to learn that your prospect leads seminars in their industry as well as personal information. Personal information about a prospect comes in handy when trying to build rapport. Of course, if your contact has a remotely common name, you may run into problems separating facts about them from facts about others with the same name. With this type of information, you can guide the conversation to areas that you know will pique their interest. Building rapport is a key element to any sale as people generally buy from people they like and trust.
As for the ninety per cent of sales people who are not excellent researchers. From my experience most don’t do a great deal of research about prospective clients apart from listing their names and phone numbers on a lead sheet. And in most cases they don’t even check their prospects websites. Generally you will find they were given the lead and made assumptions about what the client needed, and thus missed an opportunity to do business. How often do you see your colleagues or competitors close a deal with one of your prospects? Do you ever wonder how they managed to close a deal with them and you didn’t? Well the short answer it was probably down to the fact they were better prepared. They knew their prospects needs and offered them the right product at the right price.