Great Sellers are Great Researchers. Here Are 6 Tips On What to Look For.
By Paul Petrone
Something top performers – i.e. reps who hit 150% of quota – do twice as often as their peers?
Research. Meaningful, deep research into their prospects to find out about their business, their interests, and what’s driving them, both intrinsically and extrinsically.
This makes sense. The better you understand your prospect and their business, the more likely they are to trust you and want to work with you.
Research is a broad term, though. And you don’t have unlimited time to do it.
So, what research should you do? And what’s the best way to get that information? We asked some of the best reps out there to find out.
Six tips from great sellers on what to look for when doing sales research.
What top sellers told us about research – it’s critical to building credibility. Because, quite frankly, a prospect isn’t going to trust you if you don’t know anything about them, their organization, or their industry.
You want to show up to each call prepared. Here are six ways to do that:
1. Know your prospect’s industry and where it’s headed.
The first time you talk with a prospect, there’s going to be a lot you don’t know. But there is one thing you should know really well – their industry and where it’s headed.
“I really want to know the industry, so I can speak credibly to that, while not pretending to be an expert on their business,” ConvergentIS VP of Sales and MarketingVP of Sales and Marketing Kim Orlesky said in her How I Sell interview. “So, much more research into industries and into the future, not the past.”
Venli Consulting Group President Marcus Chan echoed that in his How I Sell interview as well – “You need to know common pains and problems in the industry you are selling into,” he said. “You should know it inside and out.”
The point? The best sellers are seen as trusted, strategic advisors. To be seen that way, you need to earn it by having a deep knowledge of the landscape your buyer is dealing in.
This research is always-on – meaning, you need to continually stay on top of the industry you sell into. Over time, you’ll build your expertise, which will help you build trust.
2. Uncover the big initiatives the prospect's organization is focused on using these two sources.
Beyond the industry, most sales research begins with the organization you are selling into.
Obviously, you need to know the basics about it – the organization’s size, where it’s located, how it makes money, etc.
The real key though, said Chan, is understanding the big initiatives the organization is focused on. Because, if you can figure out what the organization is focused on, you can then figure out how to tie your solution to that outcome.
Where can you find what big initiatives the organization is focused on?
“One of my favorite ways to get this information, particularly about the company, is – if it’s a publicly-traded company – from the earnings transcript,” Chan said. “Because, if you read it, they’ll tell you – we are focused on doing these big initiatives and we’re looking to do it this way. Then, I begin to tie my solution to those initiatives.”
What if they aren’t a publicly-traded company? Catalyst Software CRO Mark Kosoglow suggests checking out the organization’s LinkedIn Page.
“I usually go to their company LinkedIn Page too and look at the posts,” Kosoglow said. “A lot of people forget that there is a marketing department running the social strategy, and the social strategy is aligning to some business strategy. If you look and see the theme of the posts, you can sometimes deduce what the company is trying to do, which can point to a pain or challenge. And that can start a conversation.”
If you can focus the conversation on the bigger goals the organization is working toward, the more likely you are to close a bigger deal.
3. Research the prospect to uncover commonalities, interests, and – if possible – what motivates them.
Salesloft RVP Amanda Georgoff said, yes, she researches the organization before a sales call. But she spends even more time researching the person she’s going to speak to.
“Probably the area I spend the most amount of time on before a sales call is research on that person,” she said. “Are they on Twitter? Are they on LinkedIn? And what are they posting? Where did they go to college, what is the arc of their career, where do they live, where have they worked? What are their hobbies, how do they like to spend their time? Do they talk about their family at all?”
“I try, as much as I can, to get a real sense of someone before a call,” she added. “Things they might like, things they might not like. Any sort of inclinations, anything I can use to humanize a person before talking to them.”
There are a few reasons for this. First off, if you get a sense of the person and what they like, you are far more likely to build a strong rapport with them. And that’s key to building a lasting relationship.
More importantly, if you can figure out what motivates them, you can position the deal around that. And that’ll create intrinsic motivation for the prospect to buy.
“Get into their psychographics and how they make decisions,” Chan said. “Once I understand their psychographics, then I can dive in and move the deal forward.”
4. Find hidden ways to connect by focusing on the details.
“I research as much as I can in two different areas,” says Alejandro Cabral, North American District Manager - Digital Sales at Kimberly-Clark Professional. “The first is the company and the context in which that company moves. That sometimes means I need to know more about the industry, the current state of the company. Even, sometimes, the current state of the country the company is in.”
But Cabral’s research doesn’t end with the company.
“The second is the person. What I try to do is understand, in the least invasive way I can, is who this person is. I don’t go on Twitter or Facebook; I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn to see what they are putting out there,” added Cabral.
Focusing on the company gives Gabral context for the big picture – but focusing on the person gives him information he needs to make a personal connection.
“I’ll give an example. One time, before a meeting, I saw the person had a henhouse for his background picture on LinkedIn. So, I asked him, after introductions, what’s with the henhouse?
He told me he inherited the henhouse and the farm it sat on from his parents and his dream in life was to retire and live on that farm,” added Cabral. “He was very excited to talk about it. After that, it was a smooth conversation, because he felt comfortable.”
5. A hack for preparing for larger calls – the stutter-stop meeting.
This is a trick Airtable SDR Manager GB Blackwell learned from a mentor of hers she still leverages today, called the stutter-stop meeting.
This technique is for when you already have a champion at the company, and that champion is bringing you to talk to more senior people within the account. A couple of days before the meeting, Blackwell recommends calling your champion and asking what should I know about the other people on the call, and how can I make you shine?
“Yes, you can do the research online and on LinkedIn and all of that,” Blackwell said in her How I Sell interview. “But that really helped me, hearing from the champion on what I should be aware of and getting a download on all of the other stakeholders in the meeting. And they would give you all the goods. They would coach me up on how to perform. When I started doing that, that's where I really started to see the most engagement.”
6. Ideally, try to find out where they want their career to go.
Discovery is perhaps the most important phase of research. When that time comes, Rob Humphrey, Global Client Director at LinkedIn and host of the Deep Sales Podcast, digs deep to find his customer’s personal motivation.
“Assuming I'm talking to one person, I always ask them what their career game plan is,” said Humphrey. “Perhaps that's the recruiter in me, but I'm fascinated to hear the answer to this question.”
Understanding his client’s career goals gives Humphrey valuable insight into how his customer will help create a buyer/seller relationship based on mutual success.
“Some people don't have a career game plan," he said.
"Some people will have an aggressive plan of how they want to become the director or the VP or whatever it may be. A lot of people have told me they want to get the hell out of their company as soon as possible."
“But once you open it up to talking about what I refer to as mutual success and understand what people really want to be – whether it’s promoted or to be a professional snowboarder or to live off the grid in Alaska or live in Manhattan – once you start getting a handle on that, now you can actually get into the actual process of selling,” Humphrey added.
Bonus tip – speaking of discovery, here’s a great metaphor for doing it well.
Research before calls is critical because it allows you to build credibility and – ideally – helps you connect with the buyer. But the most important research you’ll do is in sales calls themselves, when you are doing deep discovery with your buyer.
Kosoglow – a self-proclaimed “sales nerd” who has dedicated his life to selling – has advice here on what to avoid. To illustrate his point, he uses a metaphor about finding a gold coin on the beach.
What happens if you find a gold coin on the beach, Kosoglow asks? Many people pick it up, consider it their lucky day, and keep walking. But, the best thing to do is to grab a shovel and keep digging – because, where there is one gold coin, there is likely a treasure chest buried deep below.
Kosoglow’s story is an adage about sales discovery. Most salespeople find one problem in discovery, get excited, and then run with it. His advice – dig deeper there. Really find out what’s going on.
By doing this, you often uncover a far larger, more systematic problem. This creates a feeling within the buyer of “I got to do something to fix it.”