Chapter 3

Intelligence Gathering

Making Your Calls Smart

Prepare to win, or lose to someone who is.

—Jeffrey Gitomer

What differentiates a dumb cold call from a Smart Call is, first, what you learn about a prospect and his situation. We can modify the old saying, “It’s all about who you know” to “It’s all about WHAT you know, about who you want to know, in order to actually get to know them.”

But it’s not just about information. Perhaps you’ve heard the quote attributed to Sir Francis Bacon: “Knowledge is power.” However, with respect to Sir Francis, knowledge is not power. To quote Calvin Coolidge, “There are lots of educated derelicts.”

The power comes in how you use this knowledge, which we will discuss later in the book. In this chapter, we’ll cover intelligence gathering: what you want to learn and, then, where to find it.

What Information Do You Want about Your Prospects?

The intelligence you seek depends on what you sell and why someone would buy. Simpler sales—those that are more transactional and have a shorter sales cycle, such as an ad in the community magazine—are not likely to warrant as much time as a seven-figure sale for consulting services to a Fortune 100 company. However, the same processes and techniques can be used in both situations.

In general, you are looking for factual data as well as situational information. Facts include basic statistics, such as how many locations or number of employees the company has, their financial results, and, as obvious as this might seem, what the company actually does. However, I’m not shy to repeat what should be obvious since I know most people—including myself—regularly need to be reminded of the fundamentals.

As an example, it boggles my mind how salespeople can pick up the phone to call a company without even knowing what they sell. For example, my company’s name is Business By Phone Inc. I am regularly prospected by clueless callers who think that we are a phone system reseller, an outsourced call center, or a company much larger than we are, since they pitch me on services appropriate only for companies with more than 50 employees. Dumb.

Beyond acquiring the basic facts, the real jackpot lies within the situational information you uncover. This is anything about the company, industry, or individual that may make them a good prospect for you because of a need, pain, problem, desire, or other circumstance on their part. For example:

  • A bank is building two new branch locations.
  • A furniture company is being sued because of alleged faulty construction in one of its products.
  • A manager at any company has just been promoted to VP.
  • A CEO is interviewed by a blog author about trends in his industry and shares some initiatives they are working on this year.
  • According to a national study, demand is sizzling for locally grown organic food items in grocery stores
  • New state regulations require small service businesses to collect and report sales taxes where they did not before.

Think big picture for a moment about the chains of events that could create needs, pains, problems, and desires for the people and companies involved in those situations. Consequently, there are countless opportunities for all kinds of businesses that help solve those problems or fulfill those desires. Construction companies, law firms, recruiters, anyone who helps increase sales, software developers and installers—the list is endless.

Here are a few other activities that could create an environment in which someone would be eager to hear about an appropriate Possible Value Proposition:

  • Awarding of contracts.
  • Expansion or downsizing—geographically, personnel-wise, divisions or subsidiaries, product or service offerings.
  • Legal actions initiated, or the target thereof.
  • Restructuring.
  • Initiatives of any type: cost-cutting, pushing for more sales, becoming more customer-focused, streamlining network operations, getting a greater return on investment (ROI) on anything.
  • Change of most types: new personnel, products, or product introductions.
  • Any other compelling event, such as a new product launch or deadlines of any type.

Identify and Look for Trigger Events

Craig Elias was a top sales rep for telecommunications company WorldCom. During its collapse, Craig realized that he could either find another company to sell for or do something on his own. He chose the latter. He felt that he could help other sales reps use a model he discovered and fine-tuned while rising to the top at Worldcom.

When analyzing his six- and seven-figure sales, he noticed a trend emerging. Every sale was a result of a trigger event that shifted a prospect from being someone who never would have bought from him previously into someone who was highly likely to buy from him now. These events moved people into what Elias calls the window of dissatisfaction. Elias’s model identifies three categories of trigger events. Determine how they apply to your buyers:

1. Bad Experience: The buyer has an unpleasant experience with people, a product or service, or a provider. For instance, there may have been a product or service change with their existing supplier that creates dissatisfaction.
2. Change or Transition: The buyer has a change or transition in people, places, or priorities. For instance, there may have been a change in the buyer at an account.
3. Awareness: The buyer becomes aware of the need to change for legal, risk-avoidance, or economic reasons. For instance, the person may have a new understanding that buying from someone like you is less risky or cheaper than continuing to buy the existing solution.

These events are the types of information you would like to learn before speaking with your decision maker.

Craig has a useful free tool at his site called a “Won Sales Analysis” that I suggest you download. Instead of focusing on the sales you’ve lost, this application helps you analyze the sales you’ve won to help identify the common trigger events that place buyers in that window of dissatisfaction. Get it at www.WonSalesAnalysis.com. (Also, get a copy of his fine book SHiFT! Harness the Trigger Events That Turn Prospects Into Customers.)

I actually experienced a trigger event while working on this chapter. I had taken a couple of full days to do nothing but write while at my Arizona home. I’m diligent about regularly saving my work as I write—especially something this lengthy and important. When it came time for me to leave for my other office at the time, in Omaha, I went to e-mail myself the two chapters I had written so that I would have them on my main office machine. However, they were nowhere to be found! I’m no tech novice, and I just knew they had to be hiding somewhere. I frantically searched for the files. Nada. Talk about a sick feeling! To make things worse, my flight was leaving in 90 minutes. Wanting to continue my search, I quickly added the GoToMyPC service to that computer, since I could then access it from any Internet-connected computer later. (I never did locate the files. Luckily, I had printed out hard copies and was able to re-create them—with some pain and expense.)

Now, I would imagine that at Citrix, the GoToMyPC people, their sales reps—if they practice a form of Smart Calling—would want to know if prospects and their employees ever work from home or another remote location and whether they ever had emergency situations where they needed to search for data on another machine. (This is something you can learn by doing social engineering, which we will cover shortly.)

Smart Calling Exercise
1. List the factual information you would like to learn about your prospects before a call.
2. Identify the situational information you would like to learn prior to your calls.

Getting Personal

In addition to acquiring information on the company, it’s helpful to be knowledgeable about the people. What information is important to know? Whatever is available. Dig for what you can find out about them personally and in their professional lives. I’m by no means suggesting you mention or use everything you learn, since you don’t want to come across as a creepy stalker. A female client told me a sales rep cold-called her and, in the opening, told her that he saw her picture online and liked her smile. (I can hear the collective “Ewwwww!”) You, of course, need to be judicious and use the information appropriately.

This becomes valuable when you can make a closer connection with your prospect by asking questions later in a call (questions you will probably know the answer to: “I’m assuming you’re an LSU football fan?”) or making a comment about what you know: “By the way, I always like to be prepared for my calls and did some research. That was a great article you wrote for the Components Insight website.”

In his classic book Swim with the Sharks (without Being Eaten Alive), author Harvey Mackay explained the tool he required his sales reps to use, called the Mackay 66. It is 66 pieces of information that reps need to collect about their prospects and customers: business background, special interests, their lifestyle, business needs, and the nature of the rep’s relationship with them. (Although it was written in the mid-1980s, the book is still relevant, and I recommend it. If you would like to see the Mackay 66 right now, go to www.harveymackay.com/pdfs/mackay66.pdf.)

He Won This Sale

An item in the Wall Street Journal nicely illustrated the power of getting—and using—information about those with whom you will soon be meeting or working. A headhunter interviewing for his own new job came armed with files on 10 people within the firm (from the CEO on down) that he’d ideally like to meet with. When he spoke with his interviewers, they saw his categorized notebook, stuffed with notes and web pages on the individuals. This, of course, impressed them, since he had clearly done his homework, and he was offered a job as a partner at the firm.

And this book resulted in at least one similar story:

Sales pro David Flannery wrote,

I ordered your book to help me get a $100,000 Business Development Manager position. The final interview test was to make a sales call to the company CEO, and sell him his own company. I used everything you taught in the book . . . and GOT THE JOB. During the de-brief the following day, I asked “What specifically got me the position?” Every single point brought up by the CEO were things I learned in your book. I want to thank you so much!

Where to Find Your Smart Information

Although I certainly don’t feel like I’m in my early fifties—and friends say I still think and act like a juvenile fairly often—I can sound like a crotchety old fogy when I’m talking about the environment we sell in today. I often feel like saying, “When I was your age, youngster, we weren’t able to go click, click, click and have almost everything we want to know about a prospect appear on this TV screen in front of us before we call him.”

Today’s technology makes it quick and easy to acquire valuable information that can Smarten up your calls. In fact, there is no excuse for not having information about your prospects before you call. The only argument I’ve heard otherwise—which I still don’t buy–is that reps can’t afford to take the time before a call to do research. They claim that they need to be on the phone, constantly placing calls, and can’t occupy themselves with research. Bull! That’s the numbers game mentality of throwing it all up against the wall and seeing what sticks. I can’t think of any situation—even the simplest, most basic transactional call—that wouldn’t yield better results and be worth the time invested to know something about the person and company.

Another thing: How many attempts, on average, does it take before you actually get someone live on the phone? The numbers vary wildly, but the point is that you are not doing all of that research before each attempt. You do the bulk of it once, you make the attempt, you put the relevant information in your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, then you remind yourself of it prior to your next attempt.

So let’s explore where we can find this kind of information.

Your Database

Talk about another one of those “Well, duh, no kidding” points. Of course, you should check your company’s database before calling a prospect to see if there is any history there. But again, the obvious isn’t always followed. I have personally heard many calls where salespeople prospected individuals they thought were prospects—only to hear, “Are you kidding me? We’ve been buying from you for years!” Oops. Now that’s embarrassing.

So always check the notes for any comments from previous contacts, if any, and certainly look to see if there were any past purchases.

Smart Calling Tip
Past customers are one of your best sources of new business. There is gold in this list. And don’t be afraid if the customer quit buying because of a problem. The problem will still exist—or at least be remembered—if no one bothers to contact them. However, calling will give you a chance to fix it. And if the previous buyer left, go through the Smart Calling process with the new buyer. You can always reference the previous relationship, and you have some history to work with.

Exploring the Wealth of Online Information

Your Prospect’s Website

Your prospect’s website should be your first online destination. Again, what you sell will determine where you drill, but aside from the obvious facts you would find at their site, here are a few other ideas about specific places to go:

The “About Us” Section. This is often where you’ll be able to find names, bios, and contact info for key people, as well as details on how the company began, who they serve, what benefits or tools they provide, and perhaps who some of their major clients are.
Press Releases. These provide timely information that the company obviously believes is newsworthy, as well as potential contact names when you’re otherwise coming up empty. Heather Beck, a sales rep with testing equipment manufacturer Acterna, said that she was more than once unable to get a contact name from an operator or anywhere on a website but found someone quoted in a press release that she could then call. Though this person wasn’t the buyer, speaking with him gave her a start with some names in the investigation and navigation process.
Mission Statements. Ryzex Group manager Peter Andrachuk suggests looking for key words and phrases that signify importance to the company. For example, evaluate the company’s mission statement or simply the description on their home page of what they do. If they say that one of their goals is to “make the lives of their customers easier through automation of daily, routine tasks,” then that could be a phrase you could use in a letter, e-mail, voice mail, and opening statement.
Job Postings. These could indicate situational change, such as expansion, and certainly personnel change (new people in new roles—perhaps that of the buyer). A sales rep for phone equipment told me he would call into the department that handled the company’s telecommunications and discuss the upcoming needs they might have with the additional employees. In addition to checking a company’s site for postings, check www.Indeed.com, a compilation site for online job postings.
Company Site Searches. Some company websites have a search box that makes it much easier to hunt for specific information within the site. Here’s a way to do it using Google: Type your search term in quotes, then site:companysite.com. For example, if I am looking for sales managers at Verizon, I would search “sales manager” site:verizon.com.
Guessing E-mail Addresses. If you know a company’s e-mail address protocol, you can likely guess addresses if you know names. For example, if on a press release I see that the PR manager’s name is Pamela Dennard, and her e-mail is [email protected], then I have a fairly good idea what Jerry Noble’s e-mail will be at the same company.
Smart Call Success Story: How a Rep Gathers and Uses Intelligence from a Prospect’s Site
A regional account manager with McGraw-Hill Construction Dodge, Tim Nelson says, “I think the most important [thing] I learn from [an organization’s] website is how the company portrays itself. I sell new project information to architects, engineers and general contractors, and they all have ‘brag sites’ that tell of the jobs they’ve built. That tells me their focus. It also gives me an indication of their [level of] Internet savvy-ness, as this will affect how someone would use our solution.
“Their sites also [let me know] who the principals and heads of other offices are that might be impacted by the information I sell. Knowing about other key people allows me to be more pointed in my questioning. Instead of asking ‘Does anyone else need to be involved with this?’ I can say, ‘Since this will also impact your Project Management team, does Doug need to be involved in any of this?’”

Other Online Resources

There are numerous places you can go to gather intelligence online, several of which I’ll mention. However, I could just skip my entire discussion on using the Internet to gather information and defer to Sam Richter, whose life’s work is devoted to just that. Sam’s book must be a part of your library if you are serious about prospecting. It’s Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling—Web Search Secrets: Know More than You Ever Thought You Could (or Should) about Your Prospects, Clients, and Competition (www.TakeTheCold.com).

Sam is an expert at finding information about people, companies, and industries online, and his book provides advanced tips for using search engines as well numerous sites to visit to collect intelligence. There’s information available online that you probably never thought was accessible. Sam and I have done a number of seminars and webinars together, and what he teaches is must-have information for Smart Callers.

I of course won’t try to paraphrase his entire book, but here’s just a taste of just a couple of the techniques Richter presents for using Google.

“Filetype” Searches. You can type a company name in quotes and then filetype:, followed by a file extension to locate online files publicly available. For example, if you’re looking for white papers a company had posted on its site, you would type “Johnson Engineering” filetype:pdf. This can be done for all types of files, such as PowerPoints, spreadsheets, and documents. (Sam also cautions that it may not be ethical to use everything you find because it is possible to locate files that a company did not realize were actually posted at its site.)
Street View. Depending on what you sell, it could be useful for you to see an actual photo of your prospect’s location. Click on “Maps” at the top of the Google home page, and enter the street address. Then you can use the various tools to move the photo around and zoom in.

I wish I was getting a commission on my recommendation for this book, but I’m not. If you are serious about Smart Calling, though, you absolutely need it. It’s under $25. Trust me on this; get it. Sam’s site (www.TakeTheCold.com) also has other free resources for you that can Smarten your calls, including a free toolbar.

Smart Calling Search Tip
Geographic software company LizardTech’s John Ruffing shared an interesting idea about finding people who are buying. If you sell to governments at any level, do Internet searches for “Requests for Proposal” and your key words. He said that most government entities must post their RFPs, and this is therefore a good way to find them.

Google News Alerts

Google News Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) is a free service that needs to become part of your Smart Calling toolbox. Google will send you e-mail at the frequency of your choice (even daily) that notifies you of any new content posted to the web containing the search term(s) that you determine. At minimum, you should have alerts set up with your main competitors’ names and those of your biggest customers. You should also include both the company name and the names of individual decision makers of your most highly coveted prospects. You can enter queries for whatever you’d like, including specific terms such as “building permits in 68137 zip code.” Google is your part-time lead generator, and works for free!

How to Steal Business When Your Competitor Undergoes Changes

Here’s how to use a Google News Alert to be notified of what could be a trigger event for you: A friend told me how his business bank recently changed owners and names . . . three times. One astute bank sales rep who has been pursuing him manages to contact him after each change while the effects are fresh in his mind. Although he hasn’t moved yet, the timely calls combined with the annoyance of the changes are beginning to wear down his resistance.

Change is inevitable; it happens every day. And Smart sales reps have processes in place to take advantage of change. A couple of sales points for you:

  • Prospects can be particularly vulnerable after their existing vendor is acquired, is merged, or undergoes some other type of change.
  • Capitalizing on this change requires that you track from whom a prospect buys, monitor any changes, and then be able to sort your database accordingly and place an effective call.

So here’s exactly what to do:

1. Set up a Google News Alert with the names of your top competitors. When anything happens with them that appears online, you will be notified based on the key words you enter.
2. Set up a Current Vendor field or group that is searchable in your CRM system or contact management program. Find out on every future Smart Call with new prospects which vendor they are buying from (which could be a secondary objective; see how all of this falls into place?). Then, it’s a breeze to do a quick sort of all the prospects who have the competitor’s name in the field and plan strategically timed contacts when changes make it appropriate.
3. Call with value. Naturally, you don’t phone these prospects exuding an attitude of “So I see your vendor was just acquired. I bet things are a mess there! Why don’t you switch to us?” Instead, pique some interest in the opening by hinting at value, and be prepared to ask questions designed to get them to tell you the problems and pains they may be experiencing as a result of the change. For example:

“Mike, I had called you six months ago, and we discussed how I might be able to help cut some of your component costs. At the time you mentioned you were with AB Vending, and a change at that point didn’t seem too timely. With the recent acquisition of AB, some of my other customers have noticed some changes in the promptness of getting orders delivered. If that is an issue for you, we have some options that might be worth taking a look at . . .”

Again, be sure that prospects don’t view your opening as the just-checking-in-with-you type of call or a call that falls into one of the many categories of mistakes reps often make with their openings. (You can find more on the mistakes—and what to do instead—in the opening statement chapters.)

LinkedIn

In the first edition of this book I strongly recommended you use LinkedIn. Now I absolutely insist on it. If you are serious about Smart Calling, LinkedIn is the professional network for businesspeople. Period.

On the surface, LinkedIn can be described as a social network for business, where users post their professional information and experience and also can connect with others. In reality, it is a sophisticated tool that offers many layers of potentially valuable services to help you Smarten your calls, get into more sales conversations, and close more business.

I will not claim to be an expert on LinkedIn, although there are many around. I suggest you learn from them. There are hundreds of articles on how to prospect and sell using the service. A search on Amazon.com for “LinkedIn” brought over 1,500 book titles. One that I particularly like is Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing: An Unofficial, Practical Guide to Selling & Developing B2B Business on LinkedIn by Neal Schaffer. His website is http://windmillnetworking.com, where he has updated blog posts not only on LinkedIn, but other areas of social media.

I will give a brief overview of some of the powerful features of LinkedIn and techniques I suggest you use. My focus will be primarily on the intelligence-gathering part of LinkedIn (although I do suggest you study and use all of the other parts, including how to optimize your profile, the best way to get introduced to others, etc.). Depending on your level of LinkedIn sophistication, this might be painfully elementary—or way over your head. If you are an expert, skim through anyway, you never know what you might pick up. If you’re a LinkedIn newbie, do invest the time to raise your level of expertise. It WILL pay off for you.

Here are just a few Smart Calling LinkedIn Tips:

Join LinkedIn Groups. Here you’ll find prospects in niche areas, which provide you with somewhat-qualified sources of prospects. To describe simply, a Group is like a big chat room or trade show. As of this writing there were over 1.4 million groups, some with just a few members, with the largest having over 700,000. You’ll find groups by industry, job function, and special interests. There very likely are several alumni groups from your high school and college. LinkedIn allows you to join up to 50 groups, and you should take advantage of this capability. Join and monitor groups in your industry and those where your prospects are.

For your Smart Calling, groups are useful in a number of ways. You can monitor member questions and discussions to learn of problems, needs, frustrations, and requests for recommendations for vendors. Sign up to receive a weekly or even a daily digest of what’s going on in your groups. You will glean valuable information, which you can then use in your opening statement and/or voice mail message, or in your invitation to connect.

In addition to just seeing, you can be seen as well. Many savvy sales pros participate in discussions and position themselves as experts in their field.

Being a group member also allows you to see more complete prospect information beyond your first-level contacts.

Search LinkedIn Answers. When people have professional questions, whether they be about a business problem or a need for a vendor, many post the question on LinkedIn, either in a forum or the general Answers section. Do a search on the keywords describing the pain you ease, problem you solve, or value you deliver, and you’ll likely find someone looking for that answer.
Search LinkedIn Companies. You can get useful information by going to a company’s listing, which is a combination of information they input, and what LinkedIn obtains from other sources. You can learn of changes and trigger events, Smart reasons to contact them.
Be an Advanced People-Searcher. Here’s a way to have LinkedIn help build your prospect list. To the right of the Search box at the top of your home page, when the People dropdown is selected, click on the Advanced link to the right. You now have a variety of criteria you can use to find prospects matching the profile you desire. For example, I entered “VP of Sales” in the Title box, entered my Postal Code for location, and selected Computer Software for the Industry, and came up with 284 executives that matched my query, a pretty good list to prospect for business in my own backyard. You can further refine your search by keywords, company name, and more. And, get this, LinkedIn will even e-mail you updates based on your search when new contacts match the criteria. It’s like LinkedIn is your own sales assistant, In addition to your Google News Alerts assistant, locating prospects for you.
Who’s Looking at You? You can see who looked at your profile, which can be a reason to call (preferably coupled with other Smart Calling intelligence). You can also sometimes get a “look back” by viewing a profile, then having them view you out of curiosity.
InMail instead of E-mail. On paid accounts, you can send an internal e-mail through LinkedIn to people who are not first-degree connections. LinkedIn says these are 30 times more likely than a “cold” call to get a response, however Neal Schaffer calls them the “Hail Marys,” likening them to the desperate end-of-game, last resort, low-percentage-chance passes in football. Free account users can pay $10 each for these messages, which could be a great investment if it helps you get through and in.

InsideView

If you follow everything I suggest in this chapter, you’d have about sixteen tabs open on your screen before a call just to learn a little bit about a prospect. And I know that many salespeople reading this may not require that level and amount of information, and perhaps they are not even full-time salespeople. However, for those of you whose career is business development, and you are rainmaking day in and day out, it is well worth your time and money investment to utilize a sales intelligence resource.

I’m referring to a web-based service that does most of the research work for you, saving a tremendous amount of time, and getting information you otherwise would not have. There are a number of sales intelligence resources on the market, and InsideView (www.InsideView.com) is the one that is most commonly recognized as a leader. It combines the capabilities of a number of other tools into one powerhouse of information. InsideView gives you a single screen that contains all that information, and it integrates directly with your CRM.

InsideView lines up basic contact data, such as e-mail addresses, phone numbers, and Twitter handles, next to news alerts about trigger events and all the social media buzz surrounding a company or an individual.

InsideView also does a phenomenal job updating their product to stay ahead of new trends. Their Connections feature is really cool, in that it shows how your entire network connects you to a prospect, so you see how your personal contacts, LinkedIn connections, Facebook friends, alumni network, previous employment network, as well as the networks of all your colleagues, connect you to a prospect. This feature allows sales reps to employ referral selling a majority of the time. Like many of the intelligence resources, there is a free version and a premium version.

OneSource iSell

Another leading sales intelligence service, and perhaps the largest competitor of InsideView is OneSource iSell, www.onesource.com/isell. It also provides company and contact information, and identifies trigger events. It combines content from 50 leading suppliers, in addition to thousands of feeds ranging from company data to social media. Triggers are detected from 30 different types of events, ranging from news, financial data changes, and SEC filings.

OneSource iSell was recognized as the best in its category by Top Sales World, winning the Top Sales Productivity Solution of 2010 and 2011. (Top Sales World is the organization that awarded this book Top Sales Book of 2010.)

Blogs

Anyone can blog—and many millions do, even if they have nothing to say (which is often the case). However, if your prospects blog, you can glean some very valuable information to help you connect and hopefully help them buy.

Also, your prospect or your prospect’s company might be mentioned in a blog. Again, potentially valuable information that could help you make a connection with your opening or voice mail.

It’s worth checking for blogs written by and about your prospect and the company at www.blogsearch.Google.com. (Shameless self-promotion: I also recommend my blog, www.SmartCalling.com, for useful information on Smart Calling and all other aspects of sales.)

Other Free and Paid Online Sources of Information

Here are some of the other more popular sources—both free and fee-based—of information available online. This list is certainly not all-inclusive, so I suggest you check our resource center at www.SmartCalling.com for updates and other informational resources.

Data.com, formerly Jigsaw (which was acquired by Salesforce.com in 2010) is a user-generated database of more than 32 million people (doubled in just three years from the first edition of this book) and their contact information. Each contact lists a phone number and an e-mail address. Many of the contacts have direct dial phone numbers—an invaluable resource for Smart Callers.
NetProspex (www.netprospex.com) is similar to Data.com in that it provides contact information that is crowd-sourced. Their differential advantage is that they use humans to call contacts to verify and update information, constantly cleaning their data.
Manta (www.Manta.com) is a free search service that provides company information such as locations, numbers of employees, and estimated revenue figures. (I say “estimated” because that’s the case for the search I ran on my company—since I never answer revenue questions when people call seeking that information.)
American City Business Journals (www.BizJournals.com) publishes the local business newspaper in most of the major markets. You can check out this site for national business news, as well as the local news in your city or market. I personally subscribe to the Phoenix Business Journal, and it is an invaluable source of local business news and sales leads. In almost every weekly issue, I can find an article that provides a reason to contact a business for a sales opportunity.
It should go without saying that you read the trade publications for your industry and those that you sell into. You can find trade journals (http://smallbiztrends.tradepub.com) and subscribe to them for free.
The website www.ZoomInfo.com provides profiles on people and businesses. You can get e-mail addresses and phone numbers here that you might not get elsewhere, without having to “connect” with them first. Like many services there is a free version, and a premium level with enhanced capabilities and value.
A paid service from Dow Jones (www.Factiva.com) provides research and news from a variety of sources on industries, companies, and individuals.
Another paid service (www.Hoovers.com), owned by Dun & Bradstreet, provides relevant, updated information primarily on larger companies.
One of the world’s largest research and information providers, LexisNexis (www.LexisNexis.com) offers several paid services specifically for prospecting and relationship development. From the home page, click on Solutions, and then under Business Solutions, click on Sales Professionals to see options that will be especially helpful for you and your industry.

Social Networking—or Social Not-Working?

Another new social networking site probably popped up in the time it took you to read this sentence. Certainly, many of these sites could provide valuable Smart Calling intelligence. Particularly if there are communities devoted entirely to buyers in your industry (similar to the groups on LinkedIn). However, they can also be a tremendous time toilet.

One of the main arguments against using social networking sites for prospecting is that if you are, for example, targeting higher-level buyers, they might not be on these sites. For my money, Dan Kennedy is one of the top marketing and sales minds in the world. In his “No B.S. Marketing Letter,” he cited research conducted by the blog www.UberCEO.com that found that not one Fortune 100 CEO had a blog, only 2 had Twitter accounts, and a scant 19 had a personal Facebook page. UberCEO claimed that it was “shocking” that so many top CEOs were so disconnected; Kennedy wrote that he was shocked that two were actually using Twitter—these folks are busy. Kennedy says that the higher up the ranks you go in business and affluence, the less use of social media you will find. He explains, “It’s really silly to believe any really important, exceptionally productive business leader is devoting time to these things.”

Gavin Ingham, (www.GavinIngham.com) a UK-based motivation and sales speaker and author, said it quite well in his own blog:

What if your clients have not embraced blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc? In some markets, the lion-share of individuals have not even heard of these sites, they do not read blogs and many over 30 do not even have a Facebook account. To them Twitter is something they do not understand or see the point of. I know many busy executives who make important buying decisions for companies who are “too busy to mess about on the internet” as they have “a real job to do”!

How do you reach these people through social media?

You don’t. Not yet anyway and maybe you never will. Some people do not have the time or interest for social media. Some people do not and might not “get” social media. Social media is incredibly powerful but you cannot use it to reach and engage with people who have not yet embraced it and who do not use it. Social media is powerful but it is not a wonder solution that wipes out all others. Social media is a “communication” channel and as such should only be part of an overall sales and communication strategy.

I can just see some sales managers reading this right now, saying, “That’s right! See. We shouldn’t be wasting time online on these social media thingies. We need to be pounding the phones, making calls!”

Whoa. Not so fast there, pardner.

There is no denying the explosion in the popularity of social media. Granted, not everyone embraces it. But if you’re like me, and are—or were—a resister or late-adopter—keep something in mind:

You are not your customer or prospect.

It doesn’t matter how you feel about tweeting or Facebooking, if that’s where your customers are, that’s where you can get valuable Smart Calling information and should be.

Again, I’m not going to address your overall social media marketing strategy. That is a much larger discussion that experts discuss online every day.

What I will discuss is some of the top social media sites you should consider for getting Smart Call sales intelligence. I’ll touch on a few resources that I have changed my tune on since the first edition of this book, just three short human years ago, but an eternity ago in the lightning-fast ever-changing digital world.

Twitter

Personally, I took the plunge into Twitter before the first edition of this book (www.Twitter.com/ArtSobczak). I built up my number of followers, and still schedule tweets daily (I know, that really sounds funny). I do keep my posting activity almost exclusively business-related.

For Smart Calling intelligence purposes, you may be able to find useful information about prospects and their ideas, issues, and them personally. In addition, many companies have Twitter accounts, so this could provide useful insight as well that you might be able to use as the basis for a connection.

As part of my routine when researching prospects, I check Twitter to see if they are active. With one prospect, I noticed that she had an account, but only tweeted occasionally. I noticed one where she was on vacation and tweeted that she was thrilled her resort had Skinnygirl Margaritas (a brand name). Of course I wasn’t going to lead with that on our initial call, which happened to go very well. Rapport was built, and I was comfortable enough at the end of the call to ask her about Skinnygirl Margaritas. We had a good laugh, which did not hurt the relationship-building. I did get the business.

If you have certain prospects you are coveting, sign up for a service like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck, where you can create private lists of those you’d like to follow and monitor their conversations.

You can also search hashtags to find conversations about specific topics, groups, or interests. (A hashtag is the # followed by the word.) For example, as I was writing this paragraph I did a search on # salestraining. It returned a page of tweets from other sales trainers, but also one from a sales manager who asked, “I’m going to provide webinars for my team. What pitfalls should I avoid?” I will answer that with some good content, and then that provides the basis for a Smart Call.

Also, you can follow prospects you would like to make contact with. Unlike LinkedIn or Facebook where they must accept your invitation to connect, you many follow anyone. You could call them and reference something they had tweeted. Or, you could reply to their tweet and engage in a virtual conversation before contacting them.

Facebook

When I turned in the manuscript for the first edition of this book in November 2009, I wrote: “As for Facebook, I do not use it. My feeling—and that of many others—is that it primarily is more of a true social network, with the majority of use being personal.”

Well, that changed even before the book was released in March 2010. By then I had a Facebook fan page and over a thousand followers with many more now. Like Twitter, I don’t use it for personal posts, but for sharing business information and collecting Smart Call intelligence, which you should do as well.

Most savvy companies have Facebook pages. When doing your research, check out what you can on their page. You might just uncover a nugget you can use.

Also, when you have names, search for them on Facebook. Since it is more of a personal social network, you might find information that you likely wouldn’t see elsewhere. Search their posts, photos, and the things they “Like.” Again, just because you find something doesn’t mean you will use it. But if you can learn about your prospects’ interests in anything and everything such as music, food, sports, hobbies, and gain insight about their beliefs and values, there are a variety of ways that info could be useful for you in making an initial connection, and building a relationship. Plus you might see some cool pictures.

YouTube

I’m not sure if YouTube fits in a social media conversation, but I am sure that it is the second-largest search engine, only behind its father, Google. Which means there are a lot of people looking there, and a lot of stuff posted there.

Don’t get me wrong; you won’t want to waste time viewing videos of dancing cats. (Unless, of course, they belong to your highly-targeted prospect.) But if using video is part of your targeted prospect’s business, you could find some real gems.

Video is becoming more popular by the second, and most of us have the capability of shooting and uploading a video at any time with the Smartphone we have in our pocket. I found a brief video of one of my prospects, a sales manager, who gave a brief motivational speech to his team to kick off a sales contest. One of his reps recorded it and uploaded it to YouTube. The guy did a pretty decent job, and I complimented him on a sales call to him. How many salespeople who called on him did the same?

Finally, this should not be a revelation to you: Look at social media as you would any other activity that requires a time investment on your part. Pick the outlets that are most likely to yield good Smart Call intelligence, analyze how much time you need to invest in them, discern what your potential return could be, and create your pre-call planning accordingly.

You now have a clear idea of the information you’d like to have about your prospects before speaking with them, and a number of places you can go to find it. But we’re not done yet. Some of the very best information you can get will come from other people. I’ll show you how to do this in our next chapter.

Smart Calling Action Steps

What else will you commit to do as a result of this chapter?

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