Using News and Sales Triggers to Create Competitive Advantage
Having a reason to call your customers builds successful relationships
By Frank Filippo Director of Product Management, Dow Jones & Company
In the old days, the sales professional’s role was easier to manage. I’m not saying the actual job of selling was easier (none of us signed
up for a sales career because it was easy), but the amount of information we had to work with was far less than today. Before the Web, you had a directory of industry professionals to cold call and some leads to follow up on. You drew from your own contacts and those of your colleagues, and perhaps read a trade magazine or journal for industry and market knowledge. But the Web has changed everything. Now your prospect’s business is online for all to see. It’s much easier to build a call list and acquire intricate details about your sales targets. While it is certainly an improvement to be able to access intelligence about those companies and individuals whom you know can benefit from your product or service, information overload is a serious issue for today's sales professional. There’s no doubt that using information for profit is beneficial. But too many sales professionals spend unprofitable time looking for nuggets of information on the Web. If a salesperson isn’t careful, she can search the free Web for hours and not find credible information. And to add to the difficulties, all of the competition has access to same information on the free Web too.
News and information as a key sales trigger
One of the best ways for sales professionals to use information to their advantage is as a sales trigger. Breaking news and fresh information about your existing or potential customer may signal an opportunity (or threat) that can be used to your advantage. Sales triggers allow you to reach a prospect when he or she is most likely to buy. The first step is to consider what the potential sales triggers are within your target market, industry, or the individual companies into which you are selling. Examples of important information in the news that you should be aware of are: • Merger and acquisition activities within your prospect account (or your prospects’ competition) • Legislation that alters the playing field for your prospects’ products and services • Product introductions by your prospect (or your prospects’ competitors in the same marketplace) • Environmental issues or other external influences on your prospects’ businesses • Management moves and new appointments These news and information triggers provide a specific reason for you to pick up the phone and speak to a customer or prospect. By using sales triggers generated from news and information, you demonstrate your understanding of the prospect’s business issues and clearly differentiate yourself from the competition.
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“Understanding our clients’ businesses and the markets in which they operate is the basis of our client-centric approach. We believe that knowledge and insight into our clients and their industries gives us a competitive edge.”
Brigitte Wharton, Senior Manager, Far East Area Knowledge, Ernst & Young Center for Business Knowledge, Australia
Quickly see news impacting companies you are interested in
How to be alerted to sales triggers
There are several different types of sales triggers for which sales professionals should be on the alert. For example, a simple yet powerful sales trigger is discovering the top companies in the news mentioned with each of your prospects. The companies mentioned with your prospects might be suppliers, new customers, or the competition. This type of sales trigger is very difficult to find with a simple news search, as extraneous information is highly prevalent. Using a news alerting tool, the sales professional can let technology do the work. The representative is automatically alerted whenever important companies are mentioned with the prospect company. This gives her a competitive advantage, increasing the likelihood that she will be the first person to call her prospect immediately after the announcement of an acquisition. Or, the sales professional could be the first to phone her client with congratulations when the customer wins a huge new account, considerably adding value to her relationship. By relying on sales triggers as the reason to call, salespeople are seen as smart professionals worthy of doing business with.
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Align news and information with sales process and methodology
News and information also become more valuable as tools to screen for prospects. Sometimes the most promising potential customers come from the most surprising places. For example, a sales professional might search the news for a list of prospects where the keyword “ethanol” occurs. Companies that are in the energy business, such as ExxonMobil, BP and Royal Dutch Shell, are obvious prospects. But when news and information are used as screening and triggering tools, the sales professional finds companies that she ordinarily wouldn’t have considered to be prospects.
“…we wanted to use news to show the salespeople what is going on in the outside world that relates to their clients—what I call clientcontextual news. We wanted to use the sales portal to improve sales, increase crosssell and earn more money.”
Theo van Koningsveld, Global Head of Electronic Distribution for Wholesale Banking at Rabobank International’s Utrecht, NL, headquarters
Who would have imagined that Wal-Mart and GE would have been mentioned significantly in news about ethanol? When you have information like this, if you make the call first you are much more likely to close the sale. It is critical that sales triggers derived from news and information be part of the sales professional’s daily work routine. This means delivering triggers within sales tools and in the context of the sales role. A sales trigger is most valuable if the sales professional becomes immediately aware of it and can act on it right away. For example, if news about a client’s acquisition is sent via email to the salesperson’s BlackBerry or via a sales force automation alert, the sales professional can respond quickly. That can be the difference between making the sale or not. Like most professionals, salespeople are short on time. Sales dashboards that incorporate prospect lists as visual elements – that, for example, show high quality prospects and their locations on a street map – help sales professionals use their time most efficiently. Organizations arming sales teams with the tools to make news and information available whenever and wherever their sales professionals need it are off to a good start in increasing sales productivity. With these tools, salespeople can better prioritize opportunities, keep their pipelines full, stay on top of the buying cycle, and remain focused on the right activities. Most importantly, sales can focus on developing strong customer relationships, putting their organization at a competitive advantage.
About the Author
Frank Filippo is director of product management at Dow Jones’s Enterprise Media Group and has commercial responsibility for the products and capabilities targeted at sales professionals. This includes the definition, design, launch and ongoing enhancement of Dow Jones’s Factiva SalesWorks product in the global market place as well as its integration into other applications that sales people use everyday. Mr. Filippo can be reached at frank.filippo@dowjones.com.
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