Frankly, sales people limiting themselves to the annual report, 10-K, or the company’s website or press releases will not get much meaningful insight at all. After all, those are vehicles the organization uses to let you know what they want you to know, not necessarily the real issues or opportunities. They are a great starting points, but great sales people immerse themselves in their customer’s business. They understand the markets, their customers’ customers, the competition. As you mention, they may talk to other account managers, purchasing consultants, and others. Most importantly, they wander around the customer. They get to know many people, they seek to understand what’s really happening (and not happening), what the people are seeing/experiencing. They look at the operations of their customers, testing ideas, getting up to their elbows in what’s going on. They see things the customers may not see or are blind to (prisoners of their own experience). From this they identify opportunities, challenges, problems they can present. Things the customer may never have been aware of, yet was going on right under their noses, things that other organizations may be doing that the customer might tweak and adapt.

To the degree sales people have the opportunity to “wander around,” the relevance, context, and impact of the insight provided is orders of magnitude greater than that we can provide without wandering around. So wherever possible, sales should be doing this. This structured process is a fundamental part of any account planning process. Without this, sales people can still have significant impact and insight–but only through immersing themselves in the business/markets, etc.

Then, as you mention, great sales reps focus on engaging decisionmakers and those with a vested interest for drinving change in the organization. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

In some reserach we did this past year, the importance of “non-traditional due diligence” emerged as a clear high-performer behavior. Non-traditional means that the reps have to know something about the customer that the customer themselves doesn’t know. You don’t find non-traditional info in the 10-K or annual report. The company already knows this info (not to say you ignore that important context!), but that’s table stakes.

This includes leveraging other account managers, who are selling into that account. Leveraging purchasing consultants that can help offer, at least, directional guidance without violating NDAs, etc. Leveraging “Talkers” inside the account, who are willing to discuss what’s happening and who’s who, all before you talk with “Mobilizers” and Key Buyers.

I’ve put together a blog on these findings here: http://saleschallenger.exbdblogs.com/2012/07/25/how-challengers-account-plan/

Thanks both for the inspiration and joining the discussion.