Increase sales by always visiting your prospect’s website: this true story tells you why
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, May 09, 2011 @ 10:02 AM
In my inside sales training courses, I teach people to do a small bit of research before they make an outbound call, and one element of that is visiting the prospect’s website. How important is this? I’ll tell you a true story from this past week, then you tell me how important checking out a website is!
I sat down to coach Phil on a series of calls, one of which was to a company that he’d just sent a proposal to. He’d never heard of the company and didn’t know what business they were in, so I suggested he look it up. He did, and found the company had 20 operating divisions (it’s a Fortune 1000 company). He was talking to one guy in a small office, who was talking to him about placing a small order.
I suggested that Phil call him again, and this time ask where he fit in with the company, and what division he worked for. The prospect told Phil a few things in response to the question, namely that his order was going to be a pilot that, if successful, would be utilized at every small corporate office in his entire company! The eventual order would be multiplied by a factor of at least 50. He also told him that he was talking to three other competitors of Phil’s.
Initially, Phil had sent his proposal out in response to a request generated by an inbound call. He never bothered looking at the website, never was interested enough to find out what the prospect’s business was, or how they were going to use his product. And before we get too down on Phil, remember that I was brought in to fix these issues, as an enlightened management team knew their folks needed some good training. Phil’s actually a very bright young rep that hadn’t been trained well, and when he saw why always going to a prospect’s website is going to increase his bottom line, the light bulb went on. He’s a believer now.
So if you’re a rep, ensure that you visit your prospect’s website before you make your first outbound call to the company. If it’s an inbound call, get the URL early in the call and have it up on your screen while you’re talking. If you’re a manager, insist that your team do it. And add “always visit your prospect’s website on the first call” to your Best Practices Playbook.