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Gather information on potential sales opportunities

 Before you make contact with your prospect, gather as much information about the sales potential as possible. This is called the Pre-Approach. The salesman conducts primary research to gain as much information about the prospect.

What prospect information do salespeople need to prepare for a sale? Some information comes from external sources gathered about the client. Most people will find just about everything they need to know about a company from the Internet. Look for the following information about the prospect:

• Website

• Company’s mission statement

• Number of employees

• Partners and vendors

• Products and services

• Any challenges the company is facing

This information can be very helpful in the pre-sales call planning process.

Gathering internal information on the prospect may be difficult, unless you know the prospect personally. Accomplishing this may consist of developing a set of assumptions about the customer’s buying habits. The salesperson can rely on basic marketing information about the industry in general. Based on this marketing information the salesperson can make some reasonable assumptions about his prospective client.

The salesman wants to have product information to present to his prospect. Know all the benefits of your product, and which of those benefits is most attractive to your prospective customer. Practice reciting these benefits so that you know them well. This is an important part of the process because you will need to persuade the customer to buy from you based on benefits.

Pre-call planning is the preparation that takes place before approaching any decision maker. This preparation uses the information gathered about our customers, and information gathered about your product. The pre-call planning is a process of answering question that will help during the actual sales call. This information is most effective when it’s written. The process of completing the pre-sale planning is like rehearsing the sales before it even takes place. This practice helps resolve issues before they become issues.

Preparation increases your confidence level, and will increase the likelihood of having everything you need to close the sale.