HOW MUCH PRE-CALL RESEARCH IS TOO MUCH

By Ron LaVine
President of Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.

There has been a great deal of questions in my workshops lately about how to use email in conjunction with leads coming off the Internet. How do you know if you have research before following up? How can you use email as an effective tool to create specific follow-up action steps? With that in mind, here is an example of an email I received from a company we'll call “WeKnowItAll Company".

Our story begins with WeKnowItAll sending me an email inviting me to access their online company research subscription service free for two days. One of the things I love to do, is to use the WWW for doing research on my competitors, my clients, my client's clients, their industry and competitors, my prospects, my prospect's clients and my prospect's industry and competitors.

The biggest danger of using the Web for research is you can find yourself in "analysis paralysis" and can often end up spending more time on the Internet then you do on the phone selling and generating revenue. My suggestion is to set up a specific set of questions to answer, which once answered should provide enough basic pre-call research. Ron, stop stalling, where's the list of questions? Hey, relax and don't worry, the list is towards the bottom.

Now I'm saying to myself, hmmm, free trial for two days. Oh boy, I'm going to have some fun and put this baby through its paces. Let's see what types of information I can find that is really useful for my specific needs. I set a specific goal for this test. My goal was to identify certain personnel within target prospect companies I'm looking to do business with. I was evaluating based upon two criteria at this point. One was what was the quality of the information provided? Secondly, how easy was it to access that information?

I start using WeKnowItAll online database by myself without any guidance and off the bat I've got a log-on problem. Rule number one; if you want someone to try something, without any assistance, providing clear and simple instructions is an excellent way to make a good impression. Finally I'm able to log-in, and the amounts of choices are mind boggling. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a big fan of simplicity and ease of use. This site, although very comprehensive it was also very cluttered and confusing.

I found myself going back and forth from one screen to another trying to find where the profiles of company personnel were located. Apparently, depending on the type of company (public or private), there may or may not be personnel information and it may or may not be always located on the same page. In other words you often had to spend a lot of time digging for it.

After about fifteen minutes I started to get frustrated with my free two-day trial and moved on to other tasks. Below is the email I received the day after my two-day trial (or in my case fifteen minute) was over.

In between the person's statements, you'll find my comments in [brackets]. Finally you'll read my email response back to this person with a list of 12 pre-call research questions.
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This is the email I received after my trial ended…

Hi Ron:
[Do I know you? I've never met you. Wouldn't it be wiser to err on the side of good manners? Change the salutation to "Hello Mr. La Vine"]

I just left you a voice mail message also.
[About what?]

Please let me know when you would be interested in scheduling a demo of the site.
[Why would I want to take my valuable time and schedule a demo of your site since it is not clear to me what value you bring to the table?]

As you may know, WeKnowItAll provides unbiased editorial coverage on over 18,500 large and medium-sized companies. We also show accurate details on each company such as contact names, products, competitive landscapes and financials.
[How would I know this? What's a competitive landscape? Is it a cross-matrix comparing one company's products to another's? Is it a simple listing of competitors, which I can get off of Yahoo's company profiles? Come to think of it, what information does your service provide that I can't get either for free or from one of your competitors?]

We also offer Advanced Search functions that would allow you to search for specific companies or contacts by title, industry, location, private companies, Fiscal Year End, or other means.
[And this means I'll be able to do what? What are the benefits of knowing this information? What will knowing this information enable me to do?]

There are two levels of business subscriptions:
[What are the specific benefits of subscribing? How will it enable me to do my job faster, better, less expensively (cheaper) or easier? What types of increases or decreases, more or less results can I expect based upon testimonials from other of your clients?]

WeKnowItAll Power Plus (all access + unlimited free lead downloads into Excel) WeKnowItAll Total Power (all access)
[If for some reason I don't have Excel, can it be downloaded into Comma Delimited Text Fields (name, title, phone number, etc.) What I really need is a CD-Version. I wonder if they have one.]

Sample WeKnowItAll Profiles: http://www.WeKnowItAll.com

Please give me a call if you have any questions or would like a demo of the site.
[You already let me have a free two-day demo without any kind of commitment. I might give you call, however first I've got to figure out (in this case by myself) how to get the service to work, so don't expect a call. Besides, I don't know your office hours or if there are alternative means to reach you such a responding to this email or calling your cell phone.]

Kind regards,
Ann Smartster 1.888.123.4567 ext. 1234 asmartster@ WeKnowItAll.com http://www.WeKnowItAll.com
[Where is your tag line explaining what you do? For example: WeKnowItAll enables you to easily turn raw online data into real revenue.
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This is my response to her prior email.
Hi Ann,

I have a few questions for you.
1. Did you stop by www.ast-incorp.com and see what my company does?

2. Do you know who my clients are?

3. Have you determined the industry in which I specialize?

4. What size is my company in terms of gross sales and number of employees?

5. Based upon the size of my company and the type of information I may need, how profitable of a prospect is my company for you? Should you be investing your limited sales time with me? On what types of companies in which industries do you make the most money?

6. Is my company hiring and if so, what types of people for which types of projects?

7. Have you signed up for my company's newsletter or requested my company's literature to learn more about what my company does and what is considered important?

8. Did you read in my bio? If you did you would see that I was a past member of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals and the Association of Independent Information Professionals. Does knowing that information, help you create some rapport questions to ask me?

9. Are you prepared to show me examples of data gathered from WeKnowItAll on two or three of my clients as examples of the type of data I would have access to on my prospects using different versions of WeKnowItAll?

10. Based upon what I do and the types of companies I target, can you deduce what type of information I'll be looking for?

11. What are two areas where I could possibly use WeKnowItAll?

12. Since my target market has a demand for your type of service, is there a possibility you can help me to help you sell more of your service to my target market?

I'll wait for your answers and then we'll discuss it. You can reach me in my office on Thursday morning when we can set up a time and date to see if there is a fit between our companies.

All the best to you,
Ron
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Continued from above…

Set up a specific list of basic questions for pre-call research. Then think outside the box and look at all the possibilities including reseller and affiliate relationships. Maybe you do business with one of your prospect's clients. Maybe you are affiliated with one of your prospect's other suppliers.

After you do make contact, remember, at the end of every call or email, there needs to be specific a request that action be taken. For example, here is a request I use quite often in my emails. It works quite well since people enjoy giving advice:

Example:

"Please advise."

Thanks, Ron
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Another Example:

"I found an article on one of your competitors; I think maybe of value to you. Your assistant gave me permission to fax it to you.

"I'll call this afternoon to be sure you received it and to discuss if there maybe a good fit between our two companies. At that time, I'll also be able to provide you with some specific ideas where we maybe able to give you a competitive advantage"

All the best to you,
Ron
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Another Example:
Hi Mr. Smith,
As we discussed, you are looking to hire more reps in the Business Intelligence /Information Management space. We also agreed that our selling philosophies a rather identical.

Your main goal is to teach your reps how to hunt effectively and ferret out opportunities in short order. Your reps are dealing with customers and resellers. I have an article from Software Magazine that I will fax to you. You may it of value to you when you go to cost justify the sales training to your management.

Since you need to have another two people on board before we can finalize the training dates, I sent you a list of web sites where you can find sales reps, sent the job criterion you e-mailed to me out to my job seekers list. I also sent you two possible candidates.

You have people in both Reston and Denver and all will be in Denver the week of September 9th before two weeks of ABC University. We spoke of setting up a two-day class during the week of September 9th.
You mentioned you need to run this by Tim, Dan and then Andy for budget approval. Attached is a sample Agreement with a fee schedule for your review and signature.

I will follow this email with more specific details about the live sales call-training workshop, which you can read at your convenience. This will include comments from people who mentioned they wished they had this type of training prior to their product training.

I look forward to speaking with you on Wednesday, September 28 at 8am PST when I will call you at: 303-555-1234 to discuss the next steps needed to put a live sales call training workshop in place for ABC.

Please call me at 818-991-6487 if you have questions before then.

All the best to you,
Ron

The Lesson…
Don't send emails asking me to call you or to do something, unless you have provided information or topics of value specifically related to my company. This type of information may include insights you want to share about my clients, prospects, industry or competitors that would be worth me taking my time to discuss.

Separate yourself from the rest of the reps who do no homework and then expect that their products and services alone will generate sales.

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Ron LaVine, MBA is president and founder of Accelerated Sales Training, Inc., a live cold call training firm located in Oak Park, CA. You can get a special report “41 sales Tips You Can Use Right Now” AND the free bimonthly Sales Tips for Selling Success eZine all by signing up at http://www.ast-incorp.com. If you would like information on Live Cold Calling Sales Training please call Ron at 818-991-6487 PST. © 2010 by Accelerated Sales Training, Inc.