One of the most under-utilized resources for sales research is a company’s quarterly earnings call transcript. Earnings calls are held four times a year to update investors on the performance of the company over the last quarter and their future outlook. They generally include financial information like operating expenses, capital expenditures, stock share prices, and GAAP analysis.

These reports are free and easy to find, but the amount of text and numbers in them can seem completely daunting at first glance. Admittedly, a majority of the information in these transcripts is not useful to a sales rep, but taking time to go through with a fine toothed comb will almost always yield at least a few “golden nuggets” of actionable information.

Tom Costa at Eyes on Sales notes that the CEO and CFO “talk candidly” about sales performance, initiatives, and new product announcements, and he discusses how to use the transcript to define prospects and competitors in your industry. Sales reps can (and should) use the information in these transcripts to fully-prepare for a prospecting call.

The CEO and CFO are generally the two company representatives that present to investors during a quarterly earnings call. Of course, much of the information they give is geared toward shareholders and is boring financials, but the one piece of helpful data that they generally give in the call is the company’s capital expenditures. They often discuss the expenditures for the year to date, as well as what their budget/goal amount is for the rest of the fiscal year. By pulling up the company’s earnings call transcript on and doing a search for “capital expenditure” or “capex” can give you insight into how much the company has been spending, and what their budget is for the coming months. This, of course, could prevent you from wasting time trying to sell to a company that doesn’t have the money to buy your product.

Understanding an account does not only mean knowing who the decision makers are and the company’s organizational structure; one of the worst things you can do is to go into a sales call and not fully-understand and be attempting to solve one of their business problems. Coming in to relieve a pain within a company is a much more effective approach to selling than pitching your product blindly to an exec that you have pegged as the exec with the money burning a hole in his pocket.

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

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