Are you doing all you can to prepare yourself for a sales call? It is extremely important it is to be in touch with the latest information about your clients and prospects in order to make a better sale. This is not limited to how much they buy or how frequently they buy-take your sales to the next level by learning even more about your customers. The more information you know, the more likely you are to make a sale, improve existing relationships and begin new ones.
In fact, Brian Vellmure of CRM Strategies recently posted on the importance for sales individuals of being “social anthropologists”. This means knowing not only the basics about your clients but also knowing what influences them such as who they associate with, their interests, preferences etc. Brian describes it as striving to learn about your customers in the contexts of their lives. He describes how understanding how your customers work will allow you to gain insight into how they influence others, which can lead to additional sales for you.
Being connected via social networks is imperative to a sales 2.0 world, where this up-to-date information can often provide more valuable insight into customers/prospects than static information. For example, in a recent survey conducted by OneSource, it was found that 47.8% of those surveyed were using LinkedIn more this year than last year for B2B sales prospecting. This suggests that sales professionals are using social media more and more for prospecting purposes, most likely because of the amount of readily available information it provides about the prospect. The more information you can gather about a prospect, the more likely you will be to close.