{"id":1168,"date":"2015-04-30T08:52:47","date_gmt":"2015-04-30T15:52:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/salesfolk.com\/blog\/?p=1168"},"modified":"2019-07-02T12:55:14","modified_gmt":"2019-07-02T19:55:14","slug":"4-ways-e-stalk-sales-prospects-like-a-journalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/salesfolk.com\/blog\/4-ways-e-stalk-sales-prospects-like-a-journalist\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Ways to Research Your Sales Prospects Like A Journalist"},"content":{"rendered":"

How well do you really know your sales prospects?<\/p>\n

Do you know that they eat a poppy seed bagel with strawberry cream cheese and cinnamon at that cafe on 2nd and Market, or do you barely even know their first names?<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t craft a good cold email if you aren\u2019t thoughtful. The first step to creating a single cold email or building a full-blown campaign is to deeply understand your audience.<\/p>\n

Who are you sending cold emails to?<\/p>\n

Personal trainers are very different than CEOs, and both are an entirely different creature than a VP of Marketing or Engineering.<\/p>\n

Before you start writing any cold emails, you need a crystal clear understanding of who you\u2019re writing to. Without this you\u2019re hopeless.<\/p>\n

Step 1: Be Curious About Your\u00a0Sales Prospects<\/h2>\n

The best salespeople I know are genuinely curious individuals who are fascinated by their prospects and want to get to know everything about them and their pain points.<\/p>\n

Before you start researching your prospects, you should have a few questions in mind. These questions will guide your investigation to make it more effective.<\/p>\n

Ask yourself these questions about your audience or “buyer persona” before you start writing an email:<\/b><\/h3>\n
    \n
  1. What title\/role am I contacting?<\/li>\n
  2. What size company do they work for?<\/li>\n
  3. What industry are they in? (Is there industry-specific jargon I should include?)<\/li>\n
  4. What are their priorities at this time?<\/li>\n
  5. What pain points do they have? What\u2019s really keeping them up at night?<\/li>\n
  6. How can you solve these pain points?<\/li>\n
  7. What do they read? Who are experts they respect and follow? What do they talk about?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Step 2: Scour Your Sales Prospects\u2019 Social Media<\/h2>\n

    It\u2019s great if you can actually talk to someone who fits the same buyer persona. This could be a friend, colleague, or one of your customers. However, if you don\u2019t have access to these people and need to get started, a great approach is what I like to refer to as \u201ce-stalking.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Once you have decided what persona you\u2019re reaching out to and what criteria define that persona, make a list of 5-10 people in each buyer persona that you want to contact.<\/p>\n

    Once you have a list of these people, research the heck out of them.<\/p>\n

    Go on Linkedin and learn everything you can about them.<\/p>\n

    For example, when I searched for Vice Presidents of Sales at Software companies with 200-2000 employees, I found some of these people:<\/p>\n

    \"sales<\/a><\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s take a look at Doug Landis\u2019 profile. He\u2019s the VP of Sales Productivity at Box.<\/p>\n

    \"sales<\/a><\/p>\n

    When doing prospecting research, you want to pay careful attention to your prospects\u2019 \u201cabout section\u201d to see how they describe themselves. In Doug\u2019s case, he had a description about Box that was probably written by marketing, so that didn\u2019t tell us a lot. So instead we can look at how he describes his past and present roles:<\/p>\n

    It\u2019s not a big surprise given Doug\u2019s role as \u201cVP of Sales Productivity,\u201d but Doug\u2019s descriptions and recommendations are very sales driven, and focused on \u201cstrategy,\u201d efficiency\/productivity, and how he manages various programs. This gives us some clues about his duties at Box, as well as what he cares about and values.<\/p>\n

    Now let\u2019s look at some of Doug\u2019s skills:<\/h3>\n

    \"sales<\/a><\/p>\n

    Like the rest of your prospects, Doug\u2019s skills are rich with keywords that tells us about his priorities and what technologies he regularly utilizes in his job. For Doug and other VP Sales at software companies, you\u2019ll notice \u201cSalesforce.com,\u201d \u201cCRM,\u201d \u201cSaaS,\u201d \u201csales management,\u201d and \u201cleadership\u201d all tend to appear.<\/p>\n

    These may seem obvious, but it\u2019s important to make careful notes of the keywords on each person\u2019s profile so you can start to see which keywords are repeated across 5-10 profiles to spot trends.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s take a closer look at the recommendations Doug has received:<\/h3>\n

    \"sales<\/a><\/p>\n

    These recommendations both help you discover more keywords, and also give you a sense of the tone that is used in his industry, department and what KPIs matter to his career. You begin to see how \u201cproductivity\u201d and managing programs are a theme for Doug. It\u2019s important that we compare these to the other profiles though to see if Doug is an outlier with a unique experience, or if he has characteristics that are similar across our entire buyer persona.<\/p>\n

    After you finish 5-10 names of similar profiles you can see if there are any overlapping keywords that you should weave into your email campaign.<\/p>\n

    Next, hit twitter and google. Parse through their twitter feed to see what kinds of things they share, and pay attention for content type and recurring keywords. See if you can find any blogs they\u2019ve created on Google, and check out their Google+ if they\u2019re active on there. If they\u2019ve spoken at a conference or other things, you can look at that too. The more you know about them, the better off you are.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s analyze a few Twitter profiles from other VPs of Sales. I\u2019ll look at Bridget Gleason from Yesware.<\/p>\n

    \"sales<\/a><\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s what you\u2019d find after searching just 5 minutes on Twitter:<\/h3>\n