PROSPECTING: IT HAS TO BECOME GAIN WITHOUT SO MUCH PAIN
Sales 2.0

September 18, 2007

By Umberto Milletti, InsideView

In Have You Earned the Right to Get In? Nigel Edelshain makes a great point - why would anyone want to hear from you if you don't have something that can help them? And even worse, if you haven't even bothered to do your homework?

I'm always amazed by the type of calls and emails I get:

"Mr. Milletti, please call Jackie Shallow at 555-121-1212" - like I have nothing better to do

"Mr. Milletti, I would like to tell you how we can improve DigitalThink's marketing programs" - buddy, I haven't been with DigitalThink for 2 years!

"Mr. Milletti, I would like to have a conference call with you Monday at 1:30 to discuss your IT infrastructure" - you want me to spend an hour educating you about my company?

As I discussed in Prospecting is for Masochists there is a better way. Not just to "Earn the right", but to do so without a huge time investment. Most salespeople just don't have time to check Hoovers, Jigsaw, Spoke, LinkedIn, Google. It has to be easy, it has to be fast. It has to be aggregated - how many of us still go to each airline website to check fares? I don't. I go to Kayak or Sidestep and let it do the hard work for me.