Know before you call

The research standard on the show is modest on purpose: spend ten minutes on LinkedIn and online before you talk to someone new. Ten. Not an afternoon, not a full account plan, not a briefing document nobody reads.

What that buys you is the ability to talk about their problem in their words. Without it you are guessing, and the guess is audible.

There is a specific way to get this wrong, and the show names it. Do not be the salesperson who reads a LinkedIn profile, learns the man played high school football, walks into his office and opens with being a high school football fan. That is not research. That is a search result read aloud, and it lands as cheesy because it is. The tell for real preparation is that it changes what you ask, not what you mention. The show describes being on the receiving end of a call where the salesperson acted prepared and it was so surface level it worked against him. Preparation that only decorates the small talk is worse than none, because it advertises effort while proving you did not understand the business.

Preparation that only decorates the small talk is worse than none.

Source: Oil and Gas Sales Basics. Not just for Newbies, episode 6 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.

The same episode names what the ten minutes is actually for. The show describes a tool called ZoomInfo used to look up a prospect's company before a call: it surfaces their entire tech stack, what they run their back office on, and whether any competitors are already in there. That is what real preparation produces, a specific thing to ask about, not a fact to perform.

Source: Oil and Gas Sales Basics. Not just for Newbies, episode 6 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.

Ten minutes each, though, means deciding who is worth the ten.