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🤘🤘 The Art of Sleuthing - Essential Skill Before Your Sales Call

Information is your battle axe

Winning trust is the first summit you need to win before getting into a deal.

To get people to listen and connect, they have to relate and feel that you're one of them. They need to connect over something.

The easiest way to establish a connection is showing that you've made an effort.

You've done bare minimum and showed that you care. I call it: The Art Of Sleuthing on a Budget

For me that means I've looked:

  • Who am I speaking to

  • What are the latest meaningful events at their company

  • What interesting part pops out in their profile

In 99% of sales organizations they use standard sales tech stack - from LinkedIn Sales Navigator, Call Recorder, and (increasingly more present) AI note-taker.

My stack costs 0$ (ok not entirely true... I do pay for ChatGPT but you could use a free version as well) and I often get a positive feedback back, saying that they're surprised I knew so many things about it.

It takes me 5 minutes prior to the meeting and ~10 minutes after the meeting to make neat summary.

  • ClearBit - I use "free-ish" demo email lookup of an individual to learn about their position, title, and access their social media profile.

  • Chatspot.ai - with prompt Research company Company.com I get similar breakdown in case Clearbit is not giving me anything. I can also spy on what keywords their company is going for.

  • Crunchbase - type in the company name in the search and you'll get latest PR releases like last funding, number of acquisitions and their stock ticker.

  • LinkedIn Profile - you're talking to a human, so taking a 15 seconds look into their bio is the least you can do. I like to look if they write posts, how their career trajectory looks like, and how engaging are they.

After the call, I send my messy notes to ChatGPT to summarize them into something coherent and ask it to write an email for me.

I edit the email with my own words and suggestions and I have something to talk about the next time.

A little goes a long way.

Even when AI is taking most of the manual tasks away, we are still selling to other people (and not robots).

But this is my way. Sales teams should have as much tools and insights as possible to win a deal.

If you're in B2B Tech, this is NOT enough. What I'm using is a butterknife as a weapon, while you should be swinging RPG and Battle Axes to win that deal.

If you're looking to test how sharp your your compete intelligence is, take the compete program check out the free assessment below (takes less than ~2min to fill in).

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3 Wicked Songs

  1. Synthy and nostalgic Chrvches. Just what doctor ordered for a late night chillitis session.

  2. Jessie Ware can't miss. THe new album That! Feels Good! is how disco/funk should sound like

  3. Piggies GNT went semi-viral which is unusual for a punk rock band. But open hearing it - you'll know why. It's loud and awesome 🤘🤘

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Have a wonderful week and give your mum a hug!

🤘🤘

d.