Copyright (c) 2010 Ginger Cooper

If you really want to gain the attention of your prospects, you need to uncover their biggest problems and challenges before you pick up the phone. How do you find this information? It's all about doing your homework.

Most salespeople start their research with the obvious—going to the prospect's website and Hoovers.com (http://hoovers.com/) for a big picture of the company, its management, its products, and (from Hoovers) its competitive environment. These are good starting points, but neither blatantly broadcasts what you're really after—information on the prospect's business problems that impact its sales and potentially the job security of its key decision makers. When you're ready to track down this information, try these tactics:

1. Go to the Better Business Bureau website at http://www.bbb.org/. Since most people don't bother to file a complaint with the BBB unless they're really angry, this site can be a great source for uncovering product and service issues within the prospect company. Once on the site, click on "Check Out a Business or Charity" and then type in the prospect company name. You'll get a BBB rating—an A - F letter grade reflecting the amount of complaints received and the time required to resolve them. You'll also see a breakdown regarding the nature of those complaints. Use this data as a springboard for doing a more refined Internet search. For instance, if you see that a prospect has 19 service issues, first click on the number in front of the problem (19) and you'll get a more detailed breakdown as to what's happening. Next, do a Google search using the issue ("service") and the prospect company name/product name as your keywords. Also, for some companies listed on the site, you'll get the option of clicking on a "detailed view" and an "industry comparison". It's worth checking these out--they can give you further details and help you see how frequently other businesses in this industry get reported for comparable issues.

2. Check out Alexa.com at http://www.alexa.com/, which follows website traffic and demographics. At Alexa, you'll see traffic for the past month and three-month periods for your prospect. You'll also find demographics on the gender, age, marital status, and education level of site visitors, as well as keywords they use to find the site and other sites they click to upstream and downstream of this one. The trick with Alexa is to also enter URLs for your prospect's competitors (there's a feature in Alexa that lets you compare sites) so you get a picture of any trends, dips or surges in traffic and an idea of how, in terms of website visits, this prospect stacks up against its competition. Additionally, by searching on the keywords used to find the prospect site, you can track down your prospect's smaller competitors.

3. Conduct a keyword search using negative words/phrases in conjunction with the prospect company/product name. You're missing a veritable goldmine of information if you neglect to search on any bad buzz your prospect has received via blogs, opinion sites, and more. For your prospect, be sure to do a search on both the company name and on specific products/services offered. Alongside the product/company name, try typing in the following words: frustrated, disappointed, irritated, worst, hate, angry, problematic, terrible, cons, shortcoming, weak, weakness, don't recommend, problem, issue, challenge, don't like, and anything else you can think of—you get the picture. You'll be amazed at what you can uncover using this simple tactic. You might also consider searching on these same keywords for your prospect's competitors.

4. Do a keyword search on your "prospect name vs. its competitor name" and on your "prospect product/service name vs. its competitor's product/service name". For example, enter "Costco vs. Sam's" or "iPhone vs. gPhone".

5. Visit your prospect's industry association websites and look at topics for upcoming webinars and conferences. Speakers focus their subjects on relevant issues that they think will grab the attention of attendees. By pulling up posted conference agendas, you can gain quick insight into issues that your prospect company is likely to be facing. While you're at it, check to see if any of your prospect's execs are on the speaker list and which topics they're covering.