Pre-call Research Best Practices by lisafugere

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Pre-call Research Best Practices
by lisafugere

Conducting pre-call research is a necessary part of every sales effort, and, in most cases, can cost an organization a lot of time and money. Ensure that your pre-call research isn?t a wasted effort with a few best practice tips.

Define research goals.
In most cases, a superfluity of information is available on every prospective lead. Sifting through all this information can waste a lot of time and effort. Setting clear goals for the prospect research process helps narrow down the volume of resources you need. Start with a list of the information you need to know, and look specifically for that information. If you start looking at everything, you?ll end up spending a lot of time filtering the important information from the irrelevant information.

Determine and use the best sources of information.Data and Sales Intelligence providers don?t always offer the types of information you need for prospect research. Some include financial data and social media insights, while others provide email addresses and twitter handles. Which information is more valuable to your sale? If you have a single source you can turn to when you need to conduct research before a call, you?ll spend a lot less time searching than you will if you start with Google.

Mine the most important data.
The most effective research requires a small amount of your time, and leaves you with a large amount of useful information. Focus only on the useful information to shave time off your research process. To do so, create a list of keywords that relate to your prospect and your business. When reading articles, use your browser?s search feature to pinpoint those key words. For example, if you want to reach companies that are growing and find a number of articles about company growth, search for ?revenue,? ?funding,? ?growth,? etc. to quickly determine whether you should take the time reading any of the articles.

Constantly review and update pre-call research practices.
The market changes quickly. Make sure your research process can adapt. As new keywords emerge in your industry, add them to your search list. As new data and sales intelligence solutions develop to offer richer insights into your prospects, update your list of resources. It?s important to have a process, but it?s even more important not to become outdated.