If you are a seasoned sales professional, you are aware that placing a friendly person with an established relationship in a decision making or technical influencer role at a prospective client will help you break in and capture new business. Monitoring job openings at your target and existing customers is important for the above reasons, but do you know the additional value in keeping track of headcount needs? The job postings can give you valuable business intelligence and identify areas where you can fill an immediate need for your client.
If you work for a technology company, scan the IT jobs listed. Do you see a need for a DBA? Do you see multiple postings for a certain technology? You can make a few educated assumptions that there is growth in that field or problems, either way, it’s an opportunity for you to probe the organization for the reason they are hiring. If you know nothing about their existing environment, you can often find out a lot of their existing hardware and software install base. Are they searching for senior IT leadership?… perhaps they are having execution issues.
Practice makes perfect with this exercise and the more you do it, the better your assumptions will match reality. Try this exercise with a client that one of your associates or a friend knows extremely well. How close were your educated guesses?
I utilize the above methodology with success frequently. Please feel free to leave a comment below with your story or comments.
Good luck and happy selling!
A Guide to Sales and Business Thought Leadership 