Pre-call Planning Revisited

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The Institute of Management Consultants sends out a daily tips email that’s pretty good. Today’s email question and answer addressed asking prospective clients about the business you’re meeting with and its problems.

An excerpt of the IMC USA answer:

Don’t ask the knowable. Do your research first. Don’t ask how many employees, revenues, product line descriptions, etc. if they are published on their site or in an annual report. Or common knowledge. You are the expert. You should know a lot about them. So…prepare a list of questions appropriate to your consulting specialty that get at the problems, issues, opportunities (especially).

This is solid advice that many companies don’t directly teach their sales professionals. The reason they don’t teach them this is that it implies it’s okay to sit at a computer “researching” over simply making calls and getting deals closed. They would rather salespeople waste buyers’ time asking ridiculous introductory questions they could have found out in another way ahead of the first appointment. Particularly when the buyer works for a publicly traded company.
I’ve posted previously on using Google for your pre-call planning. I know the temptation is to simply make a ton of calls, set a ton of appointments, use a cookie-cutter question-based approach, and see what shakes out. But that’s the worst of high activity selling.

The challenge to you is to be a professional. Be the expert. Be the one who knows. Be the one that’s prepared.