Do you really want to get that meeting?

For most companies the biggest bottleneck in the sales process these days is getting into that executive meeting. But how often do we really earn the right to get that meeting?

As a sales person in a "Sales 2.0 world" there are many, many tools and techniques available to us to increase our chances of getting a meeting. From my observation most sales people and sales organizations do not use 10% of these. And some sales people just cold-call with no research and no customization of their pitch - dumb (and largely unforgivable if you know what resources are out there).

Here are some tools available to us that can be used to increase the likelihood of getting a meeting:

• Hoovers, OneSource etc: get the basic information on the company: company description, senior executives, revenue, profit and annual report. You know the drill (I hope!)

   

• Jigsaw, Spoke: dive a little deeper on contacts. Find middle managers responsible for the area(s) you sell to

   

• LinkedIn: invest some time building your network in LinkedIn and you can get referrals to executives in the area you want or close enough to help you with coaching on the account. Even if you aren't closely linked to your prospects you can find some great bio information here

   

• InsideView, Google News: use something -- whether it's a sophisticated Sales 2.0 tool like InsideView or a free service liked Google News to watch for "trigger events". Don't you want to be there when a new CMO starts at your target account? How about when your prospect launches a new product?

These are just some of the tools out there that you can use now. Use the information from these tools to customize your pitch to executives. Show them you have done your homework.

Earn the right to get in!