Always research sales prospects

If you don’t do research, you’ll run into the following problems:

-- You won’t know whether the prospect is a good fit.
-- You won’t be able to guess what your prospect’s top priorities are or tailor your pitch accordingly.
-- You’ll have to ask your prospect to provide you basic information you could have found yourself.

You should always enter a call with at least one assumption or conclusion about your prospect’s business you gleaned from your research that you can have them confirm or deny. Not only does this build your credibility and demonstrate the effort you made, it’s also a good benchmark to determine how much research is necessary.

You don’t need to know your prospect’s birthday, but you should have a sense of why they would want to talk to you or how their business operates.