Eliminate Cold Calling and Get Your Foot in the Door With This Free Sales Tool

In our last blog post, we talked about the earnings call transcript and the kinds of useful information that they generally provide and how this free resource can be used as a prospecting tool and to better qualify leads.

As previously mentioned, doing a search for “capital expenditure” on the page can lead to a prediction for capital spending for the coming fiscal year. This result will may be an indication for you to hold off on your prospecting, or to abandon the account completely, if the budget prediction is especially low.

But, this number can also be a green light for a sale. For example, in Verizon Communications’ fourth quarter earnings call, CFO John Killian notes, “Our capital spending in 2010 is targeted to be in the range of $16.8-$17.2 billion. We expect wireless CapEx to be modestly higher year over year, reflecting increased demand for smart phones and higher data usage.” This kind of foresight into the coming fiscal year is a huge opportunity because it allows you to begin to create a strategic plan for selling into this account, as they have noted that they will be spending more in 2010 than they did in 2009.

Depending on the type of company you’re researching (energy and oil companies tend to be as vague and candid as possible in these calls), the executives on the call will discuss initiatives and projects within the company. These insights are the “golden nuggets” that you can find when you take the time to sift through transcript:

• corporate restructuring
• major employee layoffs as cost saving actions
• plans to acquire companies
• plans to invest in new technologies
• outsourcing initiatives

All of these actions are crucial to understanding the account you are prospecting; the corporate strategy is coming straight from the horse’s (CEO/CFO’s) mouth, and all of these “nuggets” can be actionable business drivers for a sales rep.

For instance, another example from Verizon’s Q4 call is John Killian’s announcement of a “comprehensive redesign of [their] entire call center infrastructure.” This kind of information is an extremely hot lead for a rep who is selling call center technology, or even a consultant that provides services to assist with restructuring initiatives. These reps can now approach this account KNOWING that their product or service can help solve an existing business problem at Verizon because the CFO himself revealed this initiative that will be carried out in the future.

The CSO Insights 2009 Sales Performance Optimization Survey notes that, “the advent of increasingly informed and demanding buyers has made it essential that reps get up to speed quickly on what pain buyers feel, what solutions they have considered—and possibly unilaterally dismissed—and how they envision their needs being addressed.”

While you may not be able to gain insight into what the company’s buying cycle is, at the very least you can formulate an idea of what their budget might be (based on if they state that they are attempting cost reductions or will be investing more) and also what kinds of business problems they are trying to solve within the company. Being sensitive to these issues and approaching a potential sale in a new account can only benefit from empathy and a pitch that is custom tailored toward easing their woes.

- Carolyn Sebasky
carolyn . sebasky@salesquest.com
978.749.9999 ext. 107