Symptoms
Jannie really wanted to nail this teleselling thing. She had all tabs loaded on her screen, put on a clean shirt and armed herself with all of the background info she researched on the prospect’s website for a conference call. She felt good, except that after reviewing the website information, LinkedIn and Facebook posts, she really didn’t know what she had to offer or what the prospect was interested in. According to the information available to her, the prospect’s company was doing great and already had all the best vendors as partners. Nothing online indicated a pressing need for much of anything that Jannie could provide. So in this sales call of these weird working conditions, Jannie really had no idea what to do other than start talking about her company, their products and they are handling working right now.
Diagnosis
Doing research online is a good tactic, but rarely offers much specific information about any company’s challenges or problems that might be usable on a sales call. After all, why would a firm air dirty laundry or publicize struggles they were experiencing with anyone who might click a link and visit their site? Jannie had great experience utilizing the web to gather general information, but she overestimated what secret nuggets might be found from deep diving into her prospect’s sites. According to this same site, things were better than ever, which didn’t leave much for Jannie to do other than throw stuff at the wall and hoped something would stick.
Prescription
Real opportunities are found by understanding the business process a prospective client lives with day in and day out. Knowing about the industry rather than a particular company could have provided Jannie with more information about what to explore on her initial call. Using website data to speculate about problems or issues can be too assumptive. A better way to find out where you might create value is to find out what customers think of your target and see where they might be able to improve performance. You might also look into industry-based sites that talk about challenges all people in that business are dealing with. Looking for a company to tell you about their warts on their own website will only lead to frustration.
Critical Thinking:
It is super easy to get caught up in the world of online browsing and researching right now. Why not keep clicking through links and websites in hopes to find something useful. Are you tracking how much time you are really prospecting and making connections vs. prospecting by research? Have you found a way to help keep you on task in this web-based selling and networking?
The Drill:
Final Thought for the Morning:
THIS WEEK:
Please share your Top 3 Goals for this week and the GD tactics you plan to deploy.
Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash
