Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/873536
12 FEDA News & Views understanding exactly what I was trying to get at, so I thought typing more words would give me a concise result. Instead, the return on hits would be enormous and I would either feel overwhelmed by the results, or think the information was useless. Sometimes I would get some good eye-level stuff, but in terms of detailed information about a prospect, it was a real hit or miss." Three minutes to fi nd fi ve pieces of information or fi ve minutes to fi nd three pieces of information, according to Richter, that's the most every salesper- son should spend looking to fi nd com- mon ground prior to any call or meeting. Ever sat down to do a search, looked up at the clock and realized 30 minutes have passed? Doesn't seem possible. Any conversation on refuting the claim should start with sales intelligence, or what Richter often calls doing your homework. What is sales intelligence? "It's understanding the company, who they serve and what they're trying to accomplish," he says. "And, there's a dif- ference between doing your homework if you're having an initial meeting with someone over coffee versus your fi nal meeting for a $3 million account. For that fi rst meeting, you should have a base understanding of who they are as a person. As you go deeper into the sales process, it's also things like under- standing who their competitors are and what they're doing to distinguish them- selves. Are there any industry trends or issues that you need to know about?" Base level searches mean scanning the company website, doing a Google news search. Did they land any new accounts? Are they hiring new people? Check out www.buzzfi le.com/Home/ Basic to collect details about the size of the company, the approximate revenue, number of employees, etc. You should also visit LinkedIn and other social media sites to view the profi le of the person you're meeting with. "It sounds like a lot," says Richter, "but it's just adding quotation marks around the name of the company and typing it in Google. That's 30 seconds. Then it's clicking on the News tab prior to the meeting to see if there is any press." Surfi ng is what leads to the 30-minute drain; searching is strategy coupled with a basic understanding of how to use Google and other online resources. This is usually the point where Richter brings up his friend Stephanie Thompson in his presentation. "If you go to LinkedIn and type in Stephanie Thompson, you're going to get more than 2,000 results— Stephanie Thompson, Stephanie Smith, Phil Thompson," he says. "But if you type in Stephanie Thompson within quota- tion marks and you include the company name, her profi le will pop up fi rst every time. That's the difference between surf- ing LinkedIn versus searching LinkedIn." Executing Sales Intelligence Eric Schmitt recalls when he fi rst heard Richter speak at FEDA's box lunch seminar. "It really forced me to revisit my strategy for getting information," he says. "A lot of times when you're trying to get clients on board it's about making the calls and getting contacts, and if you're wasting time on ineffi cient searches, you're not making a profi t for your company." Using sales intelligence to customize the pitch has helped, particular- ly on the contract side of the business, where Schmitt spends a great deal of his time working with multiunit accounts and, of course, trying to expand the base. His favorite go-to when look- ing for a way to get a foot in the door: Searching by fi le type. It's proven more effective than previous methods, which included rely- ing on LinkedIn for background. "We'd learn a little about their history," says Schmitt, "but we weren't narrowing the results or turning up anything other than a press release announcing the open- ing of their fi fth store. A prospect is not going to be impressed by the fact that you know they're opening a fi fth store." Finding an annual report or a com- petitor's sales proposal, on the other hand, could persuade a potential cli- ent to pause. The key is knowing how to retrieve various fi le types online. According to Richter, some of the most popular extensions are for word docu- ments (doc); Excel spreadsheets (xls); PowerPoint presentations (ppt); and Adobe PDF fi les (pdf). "It's truly amazing what people post to the web," he says. "Companies think that the fi les they post online for colleagues or clients to download are secure, but if not properly protected, Google can index the data and make it available to people who know how to look. For example, "paper industry" + "member- ship list" fi letype:xls will search for a paper industry membership list in Excel format. "Widget corporation" fi letype:ppt will search for a Widget Corporation PowerPoint presentation. "Plastics indus- try" + trends OR issues fi letype:pdf will locate research reports and/or articles related to trends or issues in the plastics industry." One of the ways in which the Contract Department at Rapids uses the search is to fi nd plans and specs to attract the eye of multiunits. "When you make a cold call, the chal- lenge is making a prospect understand in a very short win- dow of time that we know what we're talking about," says Schmitt. "So now instead of asking for a set of plans, which in most cases they'll say they do not have time to send, we can start the conversa- tion by letting them know we already have them and then offer insights about the equipment set up or potential labor savings, or comment on the fact that they're LEED certifi ed. "If all we're doing is talking about how good a price we've got, it's a race to the bottom. But if we can really deliver value and hit those points, we can make a strong impression. Introducing ourselves as a little dealership out of Marion, Iowa, and then asking a prospect to just trust us is a very hard pitch." Fun Fact Press the mic icon on Google's search bar and say "fl ip a coin" or "heads or tails." This feature lets Google fl ip a coin for you when you don't have one on hand.