Why Doing Your Homework Leads to More Sales
I recently received a prospecting e-mail from a Tucson photographer I’ve never heard of. His message noted that I’m included in the website developers directory in this city’s Book of Lists.
If you’re not familiar with these books, they’re published by the weekly business journals in many American cities. They list the top 20 firms in various fields, but truth be told, I wasn’t nominated for such an honor. I filled out the business journal’s information form, and, lo and behold, my studio appeared in the Book of Lists a few months later.
Enough about the Book of Lists. Back to that photographer’s e-mail. He referenced his website and concluded with an invitation to contact him regarding my photography needs.
If nothing else, this message showed me that this photographer hadn’t done his homework. A quick check of my website, which is included in the Book of Lists directory, would reveal that I’m also a photographer. So, it would be unlikely that I’d be in need of this man’s services.
Unless, of course, that he offers photographic services that I don’t. But I’ve been involved in the Tucson business communications scene since the late 1980s. I know plenty of photographers, as I used to be in charge of finding them to do work for a local publication. I’ve also been involved with a couple of photographic organizations that have Tucson chapters. In addition, I’ve done a fair amount of pro bono photography for local non-profits, and that has brought me into contact with other shooters.
Had this man taken a look at my website, he might have been able to find the information presented in the previous paragraph. But, as mentioned before, it was obvious that he hadn’t done his homework.
Here’s another area where doing your homework can pay off: When you’re prospecting for design work. I do a lot of work for universities, and, let’s put it politely, there are quite a few dot-edu websites that could look a lot better. So, I like to use what I call the Yucky Test. It’s easy to perform, and you don’t need to be prospecting in academia. Here’s what to do:
Find the website of the entity you’d like to do business with. Does it look attractive to you? (Yes, this is a bit like finding a date, but bear with me for a moment.) If the site looks attractive, then the entity probably won’t need your services any time soon.
On the other hand, you want to find ugly websites. In fact, the uglier the better! (Here’s where the “finding a date” analogy breaks down.) In the redesign world, ugly websites spell o-p-p-o-r-t-u-n-i-t-y.
Now, when you contact the people who are unfortunate enough to have an ugly website, don’t tell them that their site is the worst looking one you’ve ever seen. (Remember Flip Wilson’s “Ugly Baby” monologue?) Be diplomatic – you’re trying to make a sale here.
Instead, show your contact a very attractive website that you recently did. Better yet, show several. If the contact’s budget is in line with what you charge, you’re well on the way to making a sale.
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I myself have been guilty of this. A healthy reminder to stay on top of the game. Thanks for the post.
Great post. It was interesting to hear about your experience with the book of lists. I am very familiar with the book of list products, which make great prospecting tools because of their hyper-local focus. Were you referring to Inside Tucson Business by chance, who’s list you made? Great folks over there, with a great product. (Congratulations on making the list. A lot of the smaller firms, by nature, tend to get left off of these kinds of things so you must be doing pretty good.)
What captured my interest in this article was the use of book of lists as a prospecting tool. Whatever database you start with, whether it’s Dunn and Bradstreet, SalesFuel, or a local Book of Lists, I agree it’s of the uttermost importance to do your homework. I’m a sales guy, and I’ve had some great non-traditional sales training. I’ve been trained to think of it in terms of pre-approach. During pre-approach, you’re earning the right to have a conversation with your prospective client. In a world of automation and spamming, it seems like this step gets overlooked in favor of a brute force approach with no personalization. I am not a designer, but the core principal of this post rings true to me … doing your homework increases the chance that you will get to have a meaningful conversation with that might even turn into a sale!
Book of lists as a sales tool is a consuming passion of mine. For anyone interested, you can find inexpensive digital versions of Books of Lists in markets across the U.S. at http://www.datajoe.com (my company site). This site aggregates them and saves you the time of having to ferret each one out by market.
I think not reading is pretty popular on the web these days. I get tons and tons of request for design work, when it clearly states on my site that I specialize in HTML, CSS & WordPress. There’s not one “design” word anywhere. But because my site is attractive and I use pictures of the completed sites in my portfolio, people just assume I do design work.
The same thing went when I had ways to contact me via IM. I had a clear message above my IM contacts that if it was about client work, then to please email me. I still got tons of IM requests (and interruptions during work) from students and other freelancers who wanted advice and/or talk. I finally had to take those down.
It gets pretty annoying at times, even though I’m flattered and appreciate that people want my advice. At the same time though, I have to remind myself before I cold email anyone to look thoroughly through their site to make sure I’m not missing anything pertinent.
I’m in the same boat. I tell people I’m a “Web Developer” and they assume I’m an artist. Code is poetry but I can’t even figure out how to match colors on my clothes. What I’ve ended up doing is facilitating the design process for those clients with a friend of mine who is a Graphic Designer. I still make money but I don’t have to do it
I agree Martha that doing homework definitely leads to more sales..
It works specially in a meeting with a prospective client..
Not only does it prevent one from getting into any awkward situation, it opens up several opportunities of sales and also gives more topics for a better conversation..
Interesting that this sale’s approach is still on target both BC and AC — Before and After Computers. Year’s ago while I was still in art school, I noticed an expensive dress store in town had a very tacky looking illustration in their ad. So I called up the store, brought over a few drawings (still hadn’t worked up a portfolio at that point) and got my first free lance job.
We can all become a little over zelous when touting for new work. But it is certainly key to try and get your facts right before you approach any prospects. It is such a competitive world that the slightest unfortunate mistake can see you dismissed in an instant. Probably one of the most important pieces of information to gather accurately is the contacts name. Personal reference goes a long way in business.
WOW! Great Post and great reminder. You only get one chance to make a first-impression. Taking extra time, making it personal, can open the door to many other opportunities, collaborations, referrals, etc. Thanks for the reminder.
This is great advice. Doing your homework is extremely important, as well as understanding their pain points and listening to their needs. For example, they may not care about their ugly website, because most of their business comes from referrals.
So then you can show them different ways that a beautiful site integrated with social media can greatly increase traffic and referrals. There are endless possibilities, but always stick to their needs when making the sale!
Thanks for all the great feedback!
Since I submitted this article to Freelance Switch, I experienced another example of Clueless Selling. Here’s a summary:
Last Friday, I had a friend over for lunch. While we were enjoying a nice Javanese meal, my telephone voice mail took a message for me.
Someone named Candy had called. And she asked me to return the call. Didn’t leave a last name or a company name. But, since my voice mail gave me the full number, it was very easy to copy and paste it into the Google search box for a look-see.
Turns out that Candy was with a local extra-large graphics company. Y’know, one of those places that will wrap your car in your company logo. But I don’t have a car. I get around town by bicycle.
I guess Candy was given the job of calling names in the phone book, or something like that. (I haven’t paid for a phone book listing for quite some time. The listing used to be part of my landline bill, but I switched to VoIP a couple of years ago.)
So, here’s my rant: If you’re making a prospecting call on behalf of a business, don’t leave one of those fakey-friendly messages with nothing more than your cutesy first name. I don’t know you from Adam. Or, in this case, Eve.
But I may be inclined to return your call if you left a professional message. Y’know, the kind with your first and last name and your company name.
I was not familiar with these books and this post really inspired me to study more about these books published by American weak journals.
Ummmm… it takes way more time to “do your home work” then to call someone and be quickly turned down… on the the next call.
I think that photographer was doing better than most in his prospecting. Most photographers don’t always promote themselves well.
The time it would have taken him to full research your site and then jump to the conclusion that you wouldn’t want or need his services would have been much greater than the time he spent sending you a quick note.
Also, as you noted in your article “The Care and Feeding of Subcontractors”, even when you know how to do something well you may be overloaded with work or not as efficient as you could be. In those cases you might want to call that photographer as a way to leverage your time better.
I agree that we need to target our services but isn’t that what he was doing by contacting creative firms who often outsource photography? Imagine how unsuccessful he would be if he assumed that every creative firm already had a list of photographers and consequently didn’t market himself to them.
I’ve been to it. Searching for not-so good websites and then email the web owner telling them that we could help them modernize their pages to attract more users / customers and few good emphasis on the importance of online marketing. Along the process, my letters were constantly checked and turn out to be friendly and uncrappy sales emails but out of 100 approximately, only 3% inquired and 2% almost became closed deals. .
Here’s what we realized. If you seek out ‘not-so good websites’, you are targetting the wrong prospects. The reason why such exist is ‘No Budget’. We are in real financial crises and it’s understandable, so more people look for free subscriptions or settle for DIY websites for cost-cutting reasons. Its up to them if they’ve done it creatively or not.
This time we shifted the arrow, we change the focus to those who are really seeking facelifts.