Many of us have encountered the situation when some sales person gives you a call and start directly talking about the product and services they offer. Most of them really don’t explain how it directly relates to your company’s specific needs. They just expect you to listen and at the end they try to push the product or service they are selling. Sales persons should do a little research about the company or another business beforehand before selling. If you know about the requirements of the business then your presentation becomes much easier and effective. All sales person should understand the the power of information about a person or a company before contacting them.

Business-to-business (B2B) sales are fully based on satisfying a need of a company. It should directly fulfill the need or solve the problem of a company to make a sale, no matter how good your products are, how cost effective offers you give or how innovative in nature the product or service may seem.

For this reason, sales people should conduct sufficient research about a company before approaching it. Ideally, sales research would find out exactly what the company sells or manufactures, who its current customers and suppliers are, and what problems the company might be having in its operations. You can browse through their web sites, brochures, product manuals, but it’s usually difficult to unleash any operational problems through a company’s Web site. Normally, such problems are not openly advertised. Try to find out what are their real needs. If they don’t have website, offer for one. If they need website revamp, or make the site dynamic or add new features like blogs, polls, online forms, online shopping carts or many other things. My point is find out what they need.

Therefore, creative sales people often take a “fact finding” approach when first contacting a company. This means listening instead of talking, learning instead of sales-pitching. These sales people find out as much as possible about the company– specifically, what the company needs that the sales people can supply.

When you listen carefully, gradually you begin to understand the unique inner workings of the company, and can then show how the proposed product or services can fit into and improve the company’s operations. The more specific a sales person can be about this “fit,” the better and more compelling the sales presentation will be.

When a sales person understands the company, the presentation and discussions between the two become much more professional. Knowledge allows a sales person to work smarter, not harder. Just a little extra effort before a sales meeting (or at the beginning of the presentation), can change the entire tone of the discussion. In B2B information is the most important thing for successful sales.

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