If you do your research and homework before the meeting, and apply your findings correctly during the sales call, then you instantly establish your credibility, your questions are much more relevant, and the meeting is much more valuable. By doing your homework, you not only learn about the prospect’s company, but you can learn about them as a person, their competitors, and the issues/trends going on in the prospect’s industry. Knowing this information and applying it correctly, in my opinion, is the key to an okay first meeting vs. a great one where you’re almost certain to get invited to the next level.

By knowing how to locate key information, as a sales person, you can also provide value to a prospect above and beyond what they expect. For example, if I sell advertising services and I only talk about how my advertising can help the prospect, even if I’m a great sales person, I’m still a vendor. If, however, over time I use the power of information to help solve my customer’s problems – even if those problems have nothing to do with advertising – then I become a true business partner. Sales people who practice this approach have reported to me a massive increase in their ability to get invited to the proposal stage, and a significant increase in close ratios.

A practical example of this would be knowing how to locate information on competitors. So let’s say I meet with a client, Widget Corporation. And lets say that during our conversation, I learn that Widget is nervous about a new product that ACME is coming out with. Because I know how to use the Internet effectively, following my meeting I locate the pending patent of ACME’s new product. I find the CAD drawings, etc. and I even find a PowerPoint document from ACME’s CEO, highlighting the sales strategy for their new product. I then download all of this information, print it, and send it to my contact at Widget with a note saying “thought you might like to see this – look forward to talking next week.” Note that this has nothing to do with advertising. It does have everything to do with providing exceptional customer value and differentiating yourself from 95% of the other sales people. You think if I did the above scenario that I would leave an impression; that I would get invited to bid for the next contract? (By the way, the above example is an actual client example).

The comment that “Any Tom, Dick and Mary can log on and search the Internet, that doesn’t require much of a brain” is just completely wrong. How do I know? I’ve trained thousands of sales people and executives over the past year on how to effectively use online search programs to locate information on prospects and 95% have no clue how to effectively use even popular search engines, much less the Invisible Web and other premium data sources. There are very few sales people that know how to effectively use online search tools to locate and download patents for products that aren’t even on the market yet, or sales presentations that were meant for a limited audience. But if you know how to look and where to look, that kind of information is out there. And once you know where and how, finding this type of information takes just minutes; sometimes just seconds.

Again, Gerhard is 100% correct that the art and skill of a great sales person is taking that information and applying it in ways that solves issues. Frankly, to be a great sales person you have to have the mentality that this type of stuff is even important; that sales is about what’s best for the client, not what’s best for you and your commission. That’s where magazines and training like Selling Power is invaluable. This “client first mentality” can be taught. So can using the Internet to locate information. Armed with relevant and credible information, the great sales person can truly differentiate themselves from the competition.

However, I would argue (and it’s what Michael’s original post was all about) is that 90% of the world, including the great sales person, does not know how to get to the “good stuff” when conducting research. Oh sure…they can get to the basics of finding a company’s Web site, etc. But even for smaller companies, that is very little of the information that is available online — most often for free. The Internet, when used correctly and effectively, can provide a “crystal ball” into the minds of prospects. When not used effectively, you’re “winging it.”

I don’t get your point. You’re pushing Internet training as a solution – for what problem?
If you want to understand selling, turn off your computer and go to one of our Sales Leadership Conferences where you can learn more in a day than you can trolling for information for a year on the internet.
Technology vendors are not helping the sales profession very much, on the contrary, a lot of sales technology ends up on the scrap pile, costing millions. The adoption rate of CRM technology is about 60%. So for every dollar you spend on CRM, you get only 60 cents back. When it comes to research, most salespeople don’t care much about digging for information. That’s why sales organizations sign up with Hoovers or with generateinc.com to get ready-made info about buyers.
Technologists are always tempted to impose their way of seeing the world onto others. What seems wonderful to them, isn’t always useful for others. Salespeople have to use many different tools to make the sale such as:
business acumen, selling skills, consultative skills, product knowledge, application knowledge, market knowledge, understanding buying behaviors etc. Searching for information on the Internet isn’t as important as you think it is. It is much more important to find out what’s in the prospect’s mind.
Any Tom, Dick and Mary can log on and search the Internet, that doesn’t require much of a brain. But putting the prospect at ease, asking intelligent questions and listeing to the prospect’s story and then co-creating the sale with the prospect, that’s an art and a science. It’s not what the screen says about the customer that matters much, it’s what’s hidden in the customer’s mind, that’s where you will find the key to the sale.
If you want to see an example how the Internet is used creatively to teach sales leaders, check out my daily video report – five minutes of interviews with experts, CEO’s, authors, sales leaders etc. http://www.sellingpower.com/video.
The information world as we know it is changing from print to video. That may be worth blogging about.

Gerhard

Anyway, I liked your post. I like folks who tell it like it is.