3 Top Websites for Sales Research and Networking

Information access is the key to unlocking the dynamics of the sale. The more you are informed about the clients pain points, organization hierarchy, business drivers and decision makers more effective will be the sales cycle. In an existing client relationship its easier to lay your hands on this critical data. You can leverage your team at the client location to help you with some information like org charts, time slots etc. In addition to this, an existing relationship also gives you the license to walk the corridors. This way, its relatively easier to understand the organizational politics, budgets and most importantly get opportunities to get in front of the client.

However, imagine a contrary scenario where you are the sales guy(generic term used and no sexism intended) for a leading technology consulting firm and you specifically focusing on say Telecom and Networking. Your wish list will invariably have the names of companies like Cisco, Nortel, Alcatel, Verisign, AT&T and the list goes on. For the sake of simplicity, lets take the case that your aim is to get a break into Cisco. Essentially the goal here is to get in front of your buyer and present the capabilities of your firm. What would be an ideal modus operandi to make the inroad? How can you crack the sales quota by landing yourself in front of a decision maker in least amount of time? Cold calling will help, but I have some ideas that can make your call warmer.

Over the past four years, I have worked on a research technique that has helped me get into the offices of Fortune 500 Companies and also CEO offices of start-ups. The tools that I have leveraged in this process are a mix of networking at exhibitions (which i will cover in a separate blog), research websites and sales tools. There is a prescribed flow that I use before I make the first call. Its a good mix of research, pre-meditated approaches and a slice of luck (something on which i dont have much control). However, in this blog, i want to speak more on the resources. I am sure most of you know these already, but as I always say, the idea is not to do different things, but to do things differently.

The three resources, I found to be the most effective are:

• www.linkedin.com : Linked in is a professional networking website. Through this website, you can upload your profile and also send invitations to people whom you know and also connect with already existing members. I have been a member of linked in for the past 4 years. Recently, I have seen a huge spurt in activity in the amount of people joining in and also leveraging the tool. This is indicative of the rise of social networking websites and also an clear indication of harnessing collective intelligence. For starters, I ran a search in linked in with the company name Cisco and title Director. My network showed that there were 500 people whom I was connected with who were in someway or the other associated with Cisco in a Director position. Can you have a better way to have a more distilled and focussed list? I will let you onto one more secret. People today use linked in for HR and Networking. However, I tell you that it is the most attractive database for a sales guy to tap into! try it and let me know your thoughts.
  
• Couple of other websites that do a similar job are zoominfo.com and ryze.com

• www.hoovers.com: This is the mother of all websites for Corporate information. For starters its a paid subscription for the really cool features like org. charts and people searches. However, hoovers is a database that you simply cant ignore if you are really serious about getting some new clients. It has the most detailed industry structure along with the most detailed org. hierarchy. The updates are latest, they have great Bio's on senior management and what's more you can actually do a search that can be as focussed as "show me the list of CIO's of companies which are listed with revenues more than 200MUSD, in the Biotech market in the Northeast". Not only will you get this list, you can save the query, edit it for say manufacturing, and run the whole damn search again....If your company doesnt have Hoovers, get them to buy it, or move to a place that has it....

• Google Alerts: This less known utility of Google can be a real ace up your sleeve when you are prospecting a specific company or a specific vertical. For example, If you are prospecting Cisco, AT&T, Alcatel and Nortel. What do you think is the most effective way of staying up to date on all the latest that is happening in these companies? When I say on top, I mean really on top of things. For example, how do you know where the R&D leader is speaking at this month? How was the latest investor presentation session at Bear Sterns? How did the latest charity event for Breast Cancer support go? One way could be that you can read the websites regularly. But lets be honest. You have a quota to meet, relationships to manage, pipeline to focus on, and on top of all this you have a life! Setting an expectation that you will read the websites is at best a fallacy. So the silver bullet is use Google Alerts.
  
• Search Cisco in Google.
  
• Go to News link and select the news alerts
• Set up the frequency at which you want the alerts. I usually use once a week.
  

Now you are all set. Every week, you will get an e-mail alert from Google that will give you a list of URL's that will show all the places the word Cisco was plotted on the world wide web!Check it out and then tell me if you have some thing that can beat this...

Happy Hunting!!!

PS: I owe the new look to my blog to a really smart Usability Engineer Rajnish Dureja. To know more about him check out: http://rajnishdureja.designmaze.com/