How to conduct sales research online


Sales research is the process of identifying potential consumers who possess characteristics of interest to you. Screening that pool of potential customers and finding potential leads who may buy is known to professionals as "sales prospecting." Dozens of companies gather and sell mailing lists on and off the Internet. They include companies like:

All charge for their services. Dun & Bradstreet is also in the direct mail business. Hunting for potential customers online by contacting them indiscriminately is feasible but tacky, and invites irate responses called flames. Most mailing lists and newsgroups are very sensitive to unsolicited email that is not relevant to their main focus.

Just because 1,500 avid viewers of the TV show The Sopranos belong to a newsgroup does not mean they will be happy to read your solicitation for, say, insurance premiums. You may get a warmer reception if you target a specific group with information of interest. The trick is to make your posting relevant to the common interest.

On the other hand, companies do not seem to mind if you send a blanket posting to them about the gizmo for which you are seeking distribution. In that case, one of your best stops should be the online business directories like Superpages and others phone finding tools. Superpages is especially good because it allows you to determine competitors by location. It can be searched by area code, company name or by category. For example, if you are thinking of opening a car dealership, Superpages enables you to find the locations of all your potential competitors.

One of the fee-based tools, Hoover's can also help you identify potential customers by industry and/or region. It has a new lead-finding tool that targets 86,000 decision makers by location, industry, sales, and growth rates. Information is drawn from Hoover's proprietary database of more than 18,000 public and private companies.

Competitive intelligence (CI) is the collecting and using of public information about rival companies' activities and plans. The best CI work allows companies to predict their competitors' activities and strategies. There are several types of competitive information. Trade journals, online databases, paper documents, employee information, industry experts, and trade organizations are the most common uses of competitive intelligence information.

Information from sales representatives, customers, internal documents, databases, telephone interviews, government records, direct observations, clipping services, security analysis, direct contact with competitors, personal interviews, and suppliers all provide other forms of competitive intelligence information.

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This article was sent to us by: Michael Jings at 09062010

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