3 Ways To Research Companies For Personalized Video Sales Outreach. If you want to get noticed by your prospects today, your outreach must be highly personalized. In 3×3 research, find only 3 pieces of contextualized information about your prospect, the company or the industry that you plan on using in a sales conversation. Try: Google Alerts or LinkedIn to monitor trigger events such as job changes Practice social listening on Twitter or Facebook Your prospect’s company webpage The great thing about 3×3 is, if done right, it can actually provide you considerable insights into private, as well as publicly held companies. 10-Ks, Competitor 10-K’s, and Annual Reports For those of you who don’t know—a form 10-K is an annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that gives a comprehensive summary of a company’s financial performance. Remember, the goal here isn’t to sell your product or solution right off the bat. It’s to perk their interest in your solution by highlighting how it can alleviate one of their pain points, and positioning yourself as a consultant in the buying process. Google Alerts, Owler, and Glassdoor These tools are great because they’re completely free and allow you to do high-value prospecting on a consistent basis for private and public companies (though it might be easier for public companies). Google Alerts gives you real-time news on your prospect or company. Whether you’re using video, email or the phone, remember to research your buyer, start with context, provide value, and include a call-to-action so you’re making it very easy for buyers to respond to your request.
If you want to get noticed by your prospects today, your outreach must be highly personalized. There’s no two ways about it.
Sure, there are tons of benefits to video outreach — it targets non-readers, it conveys human emotion and it tells a story, to name a few. But when salespeople use video in lieu of properly researching their prospects, it runs into the same problems as cold emails or cold calls. That is, it’s simply not personalized enough, and prospects aren’t going to bite!
When it comes to successful prospecting, here are three methods I’ve always found to be highly successful:
3×3 Research
Co-founder of the award-winning sales training firm Vorsight, Steve Richard coined this phrase, which refers a highly focused three-tiered research strategy.
The idea behind it is that sales professionals waste too much time “researching” their prospects: what school they went to, what their favorite football team might be, or what their personal hobbies are. All that is great if you plan to use it in an outbound conversation or video — but if you’re not, you’re getting caught in the data trap.
In 3×3 research, find only 3 pieces of contextualized information about your prospect, the company or the industry that you plan on using in a sales conversation. No more than three bullet points! Oh, and it has to be done in 3 minutes. Try:
- Google Alerts or LinkedIn to monitor trigger events such as job changes
- Practice social listening on Twitter or Facebook
- Your prospect’s company webpage
The great thing about 3×3 is, if done right, it can actually provide you considerable insights into private, as well as publicly held companies.
10-Ks, Competitor 10-K’s, and Annual Reports
For those of you who don’t know—a form 10-K is an annual report required by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that gives a comprehensive summary of a company’s financial performance.
A leader at Verizon who…
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