Close Deals Faster – RESEARCH
This is the second blog post of 10 in a series based on my new book, Close Deals Faster: The 15 Shortcuts of the Asher Sales Method.The first dealt with the subject of FOCUS, or the fact that the top salespeople focus on a few prospects rather than spray and pray. This allows them to close deals faster than the average salespeople.
Chapter Two: “Thoroughly Research Prospects and Their Organizations Prior to First Contact,” stresses in this new world we live in, with so much information at our fingertips thanks to mobile devices, there is no excuse to contact a prospect without thoroughly researching them first.
In fact, not researching can turn buyers completely off – especially if you ask questions and the answers are readily available on a company website, press releases, or social media. You are literally wasting the buyer’s time!
To close deals faster, discover the answers to the following at minimum:
- Company history (years in business, major wins and challenges)
- Bios of their leadership
- Annual revenue, size of workforce, and geographic footprint
- Notable customers/major accounts
- What are the most pressing challenges in their industry?
- Which issues are confusing or troubling their customers?
- How are industry leaders confronting these issues and problems?
- What solutions have been proposed by competitors and industry experts?
- How do your products and services address their problems?
- Who are their major competitors?
- What solutions are their competitors proposing to meet industry challenges?
- What are the strengths/weaknesses of the prospect’s products and services versus their competitors?
- How are your prospect’s offerings positioned in their marketplace?
- How successful is your prospect at differentiating their company?
- Doximity for doctors and physicians
- RallyPoint for veterans and active members of the military
- ResearchGate for academics
- Spiceworks for information technology professionals
- GitHub for software engineers
- GrabCad for mechanical engineers
- Kaggle for data scientists and statisticians