The Three-Hour Investment

by Graham Denton

You want to look like a genius to your customers? Natural intelligence doesn't hurt, but it can't beat research. In fact, if you do your research thoroughly just before a call, it will look like genius, whatever your "official" IQ.

That's the opinion of Steven D. Sullivan, a former national sales manager for International Paper. In his book Selling at Mach 1, he describes the extraordinary research capabilities of Dana Mead, who is the holder of an MIT doctorate, president of the multibillion-dollar conglomerate Tenneco and, according to many, possibly "the brightest guy in corporate America." Mead can talk at length on a wide variety of topics, and is especially adept at doing so with Tenneco customers. But the "many tidbits of information he leaves with his customers," Sullivan says, are not simply "extracted from his cerebrum." Mead researches them in advance of each encounter.

This applies to social as well as business calls. "If he's invited by a customer to fish for salmon in Alaska, he buys a book on everything you ever wanted to know about Alaska and salmon fishing." He puts a three-hour investment of his time into that book. As a result, when the salmon are running, he's an instant expert. He'll explain "why the river's temperature at 63 degrees was perfect for salmon activity and your choice of fly. In the course of a three-day outing, you will learn more than you did in college_and you will tell your friends he is the smartest guy in the universe."

You can overdo this cramming stuff, of course, and risk irritating a customer with merely pedantic tidbits. Avoid that trap by focusing on the matter at hand, which is your organization's interest in making the customer's organization more successful. If you use some common sense in determining what's likely to matter to the customer and what's mere trivia, the point that Sullivan is making remains a sound one. In advance of any event that is important to you -- whether it's on a salmon run or in a customer's office -- take the time to acquaint yourself with the terrain. Take those three hours. Learn everything you can about your customers, their businesses, and their concerns.

You don't need to be a genius to do this kind of research. But doing it consistently can make you look like one.