Researching Your Prospects On The Internet | Sales Prospecting Training | Sales Training Hong Kong
One of the most powerful tools to learn about your prospects’ business and industry is the Internet. Before the online information explosion, you were limited to marketing materials and traditional media coverage to get a vague idea of the problems facing your prospects. Now much more and varied information is available to you with the click of a mouse.
The Prospect’s Website
The first thing you should do before pursuing or meeting with prospects is review their websites. Few viable businesses today do not have a website, and those that are unwilling to establish a web presence will have to be approached carefully to determine why.
Many websites today go far beyond the “brochure-ware” of the early days of the web. Because of the affordability of the medium, most companies put far more information about the company on the web than they do in printed marketing materials.
Search Engines
Virtually every entity is mentioned on the web somewhere, and more often in a number of different websites. Most popular modern search engines such as Google will have billions upon billions of cross-referenced website entries. This means that if a prospect is mentioned on a web page, even if the page has little to do with that company, that address will show up on most search engines. You might also want to search message board postings (on Google, click the “Group” tab above the search entry box). Here you can find out what customers, suppliers, employees, and others are saying about the company.
Effective use of Internet search engines can be the difference between satisfaction and frustration when searching the web for prospect information. The way to do effective searches is to be specific about the information that you are looking for and use the standard tools of the search engines to focus your search (such as placing a “+” by the words that you want included in the search, “–” in front of words that you want excluded, and quotations around exact phrases that you want to be found; if you’re not familiar or comfortable with those conventions, an additional way to narrow your search on Google is to click the “advanced search” link to the right).
Industry-Specific Sites
There is no substitute for industry knowledge when prospecting within an industry niche. Clients want a professional who knows their industry intimately. Many clients will pay a premium to have one. Every industry that has been large enough to support printed periodicals has a comparable web offering with information you can use.
