The amount of detailed buyer information we have at our fingertips today is astounding. Information is knowledge and knowledge is power. While these are great assets, they should also help us to be more effective, efficient and productive in our daily work lives.

Having been involved in sales longer than I can remember, I was trained to learn any relevant information about my prospects before connecting with them.  Then I was to use this information appropriately to help prospects reach their goals. I was taught that helping prospects reach their goals would in turn help me reach my sales goal. Those early teachings served me well then and still hold true today.   So why wouldn’t having access to quality information about our prospects help our prospecting efforts?

Gather and Use Sales Intelligence Effectively

Lead generation representatives need to be efficient, effective and productive in gathering and using this information.  Let me give you a scenario. You contact an ideal potential buyer. But you do so without any pertinent knowledge of the prospect company, contact or how you can help. Clearly and unequivocally this is not the best approach.

Let’s take another scenario.  Here, lead generation representatives spend more time than needed researching and gathering all on the company and prospect – even irrelevant information – before attempting to connect. This is not the best approach either. Neither extreme improves the prospecting scenario for the buyer or seller.

Efficient gathering and usage of relevant information will benefit your lead generation efforts. The right balance between relevant information gathering and actual attempts to connect and engage with the buyer is crucial.

10 Information Gathering Tips Before Engaging Potential Buyers

Here are a few sales prospecting tips to ensure you are using the best information as you attempt to engage with buyers:

  1. Know your target audience and why they buy -the pain they want to resolve or pleasure they wish to achieve
  2. Understand the secret sauce of your offering and how it meets your buyer needs and wants
  3. Use productive sales intelligence and prospecting tools to increase your  productivity and search for relevant information
  4. Know what usable information you are looking for
  5. Develop an efficient and balanced search and connect process
  6. Test and retune
  7. Stay current
  8. Stay focused
  9. Manage your time well
  10. Improve your prospecting

Be relevant, be focused. All information is not created equal. We’ve found you can greatly improve your prospecting efforts and buyer experience, if you can find and apply relevant information about your buyer that helps them.