Ways To Know Your Customer

Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector

 

Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.

As any successful media salesperson will tell you, research is vital before you contact a potential customer. But what kind of research is important? There’s no right way or wrong way but something must be done; and the only way a sales rep can truly fail is by going into a call totally cold. 

These days, customers don’t have the time or patience to answer basic questions when the answers are readily accessible with the most cursory search!

Where to start?

Your “perceived importance” of the customer governs how much and how deep the research needs to be, however the following will give you a lot of background and provide plenty of talking and/or questioning opportunities. 

  • Their company website for a general overview
  • The decision maker’s LinkedIn account 
  • Other social media sites, Twitter, Facebook (company and personal)
  • Google for personal and company insights including reviews
  • Their primary (or even secondary) competitor’s website
  • Your own CRM in case they have “history”
  • IRD Prospector

And a couple of “left field” ideas.

  • Glassdoor to give you an idea of the culture and to see what ex-employees say
  • Quora to see if the prospect or others in the company are asking questions

You might say you don’t have time to check everything on this list before a call, consider this. Each one should only take one or two minutes, so in around 10 minutes you’ll have a pretty good snapshot. And what could that time investment be worth to you?

Fact: The more you can personalise your conversation to the prospective customer, the greater your credibility and the more likely you’ll capture their interest and secure an appointment (or at least an agreed next step).

Let’s take it deeper

Once the research is done and you have a picture of the decision maker and her company why not sketch out some key questions to ensure the prospect “fits” and to improve your chances further. Here’s 5 ways.

  1. Does the company’s target audience or customer base match yours? Are there other audiences the customer might be expanding into that will match yours?
  2. Has the company launched any new products / services recently?
  3. Can you identify any new strategies? Is there an obvious way one of your products or services slots into the apparent strategy?
  4. Are current market conditions or the economy favourable or unfavourable for what the prospects company sells?
  5. If it comes down to a competitive pitch what are your relative strengths and vulnerabilities?

The scout motto

The Scout motto is “Be Prepared” and I feel it also applies to the selling profession as well.

Be prepared by disciplining yourself to have thought out beforehand who you’ll be dealing with, their background and how you can partner with them for mutual success.

Until next week good selling!
 

About the author 

Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.

He can be contacted at [email protected]

 

 

 
 
 

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