Host: How can the use of technology help outsell my competition?

Sean McArdle: Today, more than ever, the ability to use technology to close sales is better than ever. There are some challenges to it, there is too much, it is like the internet. There is too much out there. So, the real question is what are the components that I need, technologically to be effective? Well, number one- you need a place to organize your work, people call it CRM or Customer Relationship Management software. Some people use outlook on their windows software as a Customer Relationship Management tool, but the fact is you should have a place where you can list your customer, list activities that you have performed with them and keep track of the sales process and generally speaking, the software should have some kind of an alarm process, so that it reminds you when it is time to take the next step with that person. Now, armed with that and having settled that, you now need something to put in; you need ammunition as it were for the gun. The way we get the ammunition technologically today, is fairly easily. We look at our current profitable and volume customers that I have already mentioned and then we go out to a database and there are several. But the one that comes to mind for me is the one that Dun and Bradstreet put together some years ago, it is been called Marketplace and several other things, but in essence, you go there, you put in the code of the company that you are working with so it tells them what type of company it is, how large they are. You ask for other companies in the geographical area that you want to sell to and try and ask for a name that is meaningful to you. You download that data into your Customer Relationship Management Software, then everyday you set a specific goal. I will call until I talk with three people and I make one appointment and then everyday you sit down, you pull up a new name, you call them and try to make an appointment with them.

So, you do this until you get one, two, three new appointments a day. I guarantee you one thing, most people in professional sales wither in a fortune overtime, if they were just willing to go out and see one more person a day. So, that is how we use technology, start with the Customer Relationship Management Software and there are all kinds of it and then move to Database Software, download and then carry out a series of activities I am going to get to in just a minute.