Strategies for maximizing your research:
- Use Facebook.
Find out personal nuggets about them, basically, what matters the most. Don’t do too much research on their Facebook and come out creepy. You want to ask meaningful questions. If they vent about some issues they have, subtly bring them up in the conversation.
- Check the company website.
Read about them and their boss on the company webpage. Look up company announcements, recent activities, etc.
- Search for the individual by “name” on Google.
Be sure to put the quotation mark so the results you get are specific to this particular client.
- Figure out which particular product are they making the most money on.
If you can’t find it from the company itself, try to look up their competitors and see what particular product is most profitable to them. So it’s probably going to be the same thing with your prospect.
- Find out who is the ideal customer for them.
Do they have an avatar?
- Educate.
The whole point of the first meeting is to get some information but also be able to educate them and present stuff they may not have known. You may also do this through asking them.
Figure out how their email automation process is like by signing up for their newsletter. Get on the competitor’s email automation to see some of their sequences and then you can use that information to educate your prospects.
- Use other company search sites such as:
- Quora (See what questions people have asked on Quora and you can bring it up in the meeting)
- Glassdoor
- Data.com
- Hoovers
Episode Resources:
Check out TSE 540: Researching Without Wasting Time – Part 1
Hoovers
Check out the TSE Hustler’s League
The Sales Development Playbook by Trish Bertuzzi
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