Prospecting and Blogging

One of my favorite topics of discussion is about prospecting into large Fortune 500 companies. Not only is this a question that I’m frequently asked but it’s something that fascinates me because it changes all the time. Think about it- 10 years ago we prospected by leaving voice mail messages and waiting for a call back. How simple was that? Today, voice mail is one of many tools and it must be used in combination with email to even wish for a response.

Another one of my favorite topics is Blogging. As a matter of fact, I’ve registered to attend the Blogher conference this summer.   

Blogging and Prospecting come up in my discussions with a friend who is a big sales guy and a mentor for me. He’s now managing one large enterprise account for his company- it’s his only account and he’s tasked with growing that business for this year. Although he’s a field guy and flies out there each week to make presentations, he also explained how he gains traction in his prospecting efforts. He has managed to find blogs his prospects not only read but also write. He follows their blogs, keeps up with their hidden internal culture and also learns about how they think and what they’re up against. Once he introduces himself, he may reference a blog entry. Or, for example, he recently read about a prospect of his that received a “spontaeous applaud” at a recent developers conference. As he prepared to email his prospect, in the first opening line of his email, he wrote, “Heard about your spontaneous applaud at the xyz developers conference last week, way to go!” and then introduced himself.

Being a blogger myself, I am so thrilled to hear when others out there read my blog. Take some time to research your audience and learn about the blogs they are reading. How do they stay current? What are they interesting in? This is a great prospecting vehicle.