Business Sales Presentation Skills Training | Sales Presentation Skills Training
Getting the Information You Need
Gathering information is similar to the way you process leads in your sales funnel. Just like every lead doesn’t result in a client, every piece of information you uncover doesn’t necessarily end up in your presentation. You fill your funnel with the information you gather. After you have the information, you use it to develop your value proposition and you build a persuasive case.
Fortunately, information is easier to come by than ever before. That also means your competitors can easily access it as well so dig a little deeper to stay in the lead. Here are some places to search and what to look for:
Searching the prospect’s website
All sorts of information about your prospect and her organization is available to you on a company’s website. The company history, key executives, products or services, and marketing messaging are some of the things you want to check out, but also look for the following:
Company goals and strategic initiatives: Most companies have a vision or a corporate objective that it has set for the coming year. For example, “We want to increase market share by 10 percent this year.”
Community involvement: Look for pet projects or sponsorships. Perhaps the company sponsors a local sports team or runs an annual food drive for the homeless.
White papers or case studies. Often organizations produce publications that address issues within their industry or show how they have helped solve problems for their customers. These can provide valuable insight into topical issues and industry trends.
Relying on other sources
A company’s website isn’t a full picture of your prospect. Finding out what others are saying about your prospect is equally important. Here are some places to look:
Reports by industry analysts: Identify the trends or developments in your prospect’s industry that affect how she views the problem. Most industries have recognized thought-leaders that provide research and whitepapers, for example, Gartner.com and Techrepublic.com for technology, and Jdpower.com for many other products and brands.
Business data sites. Several companies provide competitive information and statistics. Hoovers.com and Data.com provide you access and reports for a fee, while Owler.com is a free crowd-sourced company sharing site for competitive information.
Google advanced search. If you master a few tricks on Google, you can find all data published on other sites about your prospect’s organization. For example:
Allintext: By entering “allintext: company name,” you get a list of sites where your company is mentioned.
Phrase search: Enclosing the exact keywords you want to search in quotation marks results in only sites that have that specific information, for example, “ABC Organization U.S.”
Time and date search: If you’re looking for information from a specific time period, enter “daterange: company 2014-2015” to see results confined to that time period.
Social media: A wealth of information on your prospects is available through sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. This information is helpful in getting to know the people you’ll be presenting to. Furthermore, you can also use it to listen to what other customers, employees, competitors, or vendors who have experience working with your prospect are saying about the company through several free social monitoring sites, including:
SocialMention: Simply plug in the name of your prospect and Socialmention.com searches 100+ social media properties for mentions of the company.
Hootsuite: Monitor in real time what people are saying about your prospect on social networks, like Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, and Wordpress with Hootsuite.com.
