Use Every Advantage (work related)

Most people don’t realize I’m a bit of a technology geek. I don’t know if it’s because I don’t wear horn rimmed glasses and deal in code all day, or if I just come across as a guy who has somebody else deal with technology for me—but I fly under the radar when it comes to tricks up my sleeve that use technology resources.

my home office (a bit messy)

If you’re in sales, you know we all have our trade craft when it comes to how we prefer to close deals and engage clients. I know some sales guys keep their habits and closing game so close to their chest it becomes a trade secret. Others don’t make any effort to hide it and it always becomes a learning opportunity.

Throw in the fact that often times, I’m dealing with marketing managers that are used to being on my end of the table and negotiating for ad buys and contracts that they bring their own sales tricks into a meeting, even when it’s me who is selling to them.

I have a monitor in my office that serves 1 main purpose, to monitor IP traffic on our corporate website and even my personal blog. I mean, when I’m doing graphic design, or writing a grant, I use the screen real estate to help me work and have more things pulled up–but 80% of the time that ridiculous 46 inch monitor that sits above my 3 main displays has nothing but IP addresses and their respective cities pulled up.

all those Birmingham hits on our corporate site? time to dig deeper…

Now why is this relevant? It’s handy to know who is searching around–corporate entities often have static IP addresses that are registered to them, it makes it easy to do a quick search and see who an address is registered.

reverse trace on IP address

If I’ve been talking to an organization and haven’t heard back, or things are moving slowly, but all of a sudden I see an IP address of theirs clicking through our website; it’s easy to pick up the phone and call the person I’ve been talking with at that exact moment. Either it’s them directly searching for information or they’ve passed along our website to somebody who can make a decision. Either way, being able to say “hello, just wanted to check in” while they’re already thinking of us is a great way to stay in front of them.

Point being, use the technology available to you to make sure you’re staying at the front of the line.

And yes, I use the same logic on the personal blog even though it’s not as handy since most of you are using residential IP addresses that operate as a pool and aren’t easy to track and involve more deduction to understand. But when I see somebody use an AOL search with a specific parameter and an Indianapolis IP address, I know it’s my ex mother-in-law. When I see somebody from a specific city using Google Chrome on Windows 7, I know it’s a former business partner.

It’s always good to have eyes on what others are seeing. Don’t be afraid to use the readily available tools that are there for you to access.