You can know an amazing amount about a company and the person you are meeting by spending about 15 minutes online searching. Here are some powerful tools to find out a lot of info about the company, and the person you are about to meet.
Oh, first a handy tip. Take screen shots (use the 'print screen' button on your keyboard to grab the images) as you do your research, copy these images into a PowerPoint presentation and keep it in a file you will take to the meeting. If the opportunity arises, share some of the knowledge you have about the company and show the person how diligent you were. You should keep personal and company information separate, many people would be surprised and possibly uncomfortable about how much you can dig up about them personally.
1. Get to know their website. A good place to find recent information is the News or Press Release tab and read recent newsletters stored on the website
2. Do a Google search for the company and the individual you are meeting
3. Google the company name plus 'reviews' and 'comments', print out any negative information you find, and if it is appropriate share this info. with the person you're meeting. They might not have Googled themselves and they might need an Online Reputation Management program.
4. Find the person you are meeting on LinkedIn. Do any of your friends know him or her? This is a great opportunity for your friend to put a good word in for you. Plus, knowing a bit about their history might keep you from putting your foot in your mouth like I once did. I met an executive at a packaged goods company and I went on and on about how much I knew about banking before I found out she worked in the banking industry for ten years - oops!
5. Check them out on Facebook. Does the company have a Facebook Fan Page?
6. Is the company and/or the individual active on Twitter? Are they current? Is there any news you can learn? What are they passionate about? Colleges? Sports? Volunteer Activities? What common interests do you share. Do a search.twitter.com for their name as well, what are other people tweeting about them and the company? Post a Tweet and ask if anyone at the company is listening to test if they're monitoring Social Media.
7. Check their Compete.com traffic, Google Page Rank, Alexa Score, SEMRush.com for number of SEO results, How many links do they have to to their site? SpyFu.com will tell you about their Pay Per Click advertising activity.
8. Check these scores for their competitors.
9. Are they blogging?
10. And perhaps my best tip, from my friend Harvey Mackay, download the Warm Call Center Toolbar, it is amazing what this tool will reveal about the company and the individual!
Good luck and please comment below:
- What tools do you use to prepare for an interview or a sales meeting?
- Did you try any of these ideas? What did you find out?
Good Luck crushing it in your next meeting!
Photo credit drewleavy flickr.com
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