Struggle to find time to keep current on all of your accounts?  Missed a quarterly analyst call and can’t find a recording?  No worries!  This website provides free, actionable insights and information for over 1,500 public companies’ earnings call transcripts, including the S&P 500.  Plus, the site includes edited articles from top blogs and investment newsletters.

Of course, the site being referenced is Seeking Alpha. While the site primarily targets an investor audience, it also provides timely, well organized, searchable information to aid your sales campaigns.  Better still, all of the content is tagged making it simply to subscribe by stock ticker symbol, sector or theme.

With all of this information spelled out for you, it becomes very time effective to execute the three steps for keeping your sales strategies current. Remember, any change in your account’s business performance or an unexpected market shift may signal a new selling opportunity.

For example, in the site’s Transcript Center, from a recent Deere & Co. Q4 Earnings Call, in response to an one of the analyst’s questions,  Marie Ziegler, Vice President and Treasurer of Deere, clarified the company’s operating margin targets.  Historically, she said, they’ve run at a 12% operating margin on average over time, and a peak margin of about 14.5%.  The takeaway?  Positioning your value as being able to help the company achieve 14%+ operating margins demonstrates you understand the business.

In summary, if you have larger, publicly traded accounts in your portfolio, consider including Seeking Alpha in your customer insight process.

We’re all interested in uncovering opportunities before our competitors.  But few of us have the bandwidth to process the ever-growing volume of information being pushed and pulled our way.  By way of example, Bank of America’s recent 10-K was over 750 pages.  And filled with mind-numbing language.  That’s why we recommend allowing someone else to do it for you.  Check out www.footnoted.org.  

Required regulatory filings often harbor critical insights for uncovering strategic selling opportunities.  Yet, they’re commonly buried amid volumes of irrelevant information. 

While you may not have heard of footnoted.org – whose primary purpose is to help investors – it may be worthwhile to see if any of your accounts are covered.  The site’s operator, Michelle Leder, scours the volumes of such filings and publishes they eye-catching stuff many companies would rather not publicize.

You may unearth input for your sales campaign around executive compensation, strategic alliances or risks confronting your customer to align your value.  Conduct a search, register to receive email updates and put yourself a step ahead of the competition.

While you likely already read your customer’s annual report, specifically the Letter to Shareholders and MD&A, you may not regularly leverage management presentations to gain customer insight.   However, the increasing transparency of today’s corporate landscape has turned these presentations into highly useful sources of timely customer information.

Why This Information is So Useful

Presentations that management makes to analysts and the investment community are arguably even better than reading the Letter to Shareholders in terms of a quick, timely source for gaining customer insights. As you learn more about the information they provide, management presentations may become the first place you look in researching your customers and preparing for an executive engagement. Two strong reasons why the information you’ll find is so useful:

· Highly current information

Unlike annual reports and regulatory filings that have a short shelf life and may be dated at the time you’re doing research, management presentations are typically very current. In fact, companies often pull them from their Web sites within a relatively short period of time to avoid risks or exposure associated with changing market conditions and the company’s evolving strategic direction.

· Presented in executives’ own words

Management presentations enable you to learn what’s happening within your account directly from the executives you may be targeting to meet with as well as other key officers. The information allows you to clearly identify customer initiatives that will help you build business alignment with your solution. It also clearly identifies the customer’s priorities and gives you access to up-to-date financial metrics and business issues, clearly stated in the executives’ own words.

Using the Information

Having this kind of background on an account before making your first call puts you at an advantage. You’ll be able to demonstrate you’ve done your homework and thereby establish credibility. You’ll also be able to begin linking your solutions to the company’s issues and priorities – the ones that executive officers have identified as meaningful and top-of-mind.

Following are example presentation slides that illustrate the type of information you’ll gain access to.

In this presentation, Level 3’s CFO not only identifies cost advantage as a key initiative, but also discusses operational efficiency, potential M&A activity and maintaining financial strength. You can use this insight to develop a value proposition demonstrating how your solution drives cost savings, improves efficiencies, reduces time to integration for future acquisitions as well as improves cash flow – all of which, when quantified and linked to these initiatives, demonstrate your credibility.

In this presentation, Alltel’s Group President of Operations shares a host of potential points of alignment where your solution might help the company achieve its stated initiatives.

Accessing the Information

First, check your customer’s Web site. The presentations that companies make to analysts and investment communities on a quarterly basis can typically be found in the Investor Relations area. Often you’ll have a choice of viewing the presentations themselves, reading transcripts or listening to audio archives of Webcasts. Additional online resources include Earnings.com and Yahoo! Finance, where you can access conference calls by entering a company’s stock ticker symbol.

Tip: Subscribe to an e-mail alert service. Many companies offer this as part of their investor relations effort. You’ll know right away when new information that may identify a selling opportunity is made available.

One Stop for Valuable Insight

Management presentations offer "one-stop shopping" for obtaining timely account information that can give you the insight you need to establish credibility and identify opportunities. You may find they’re the best overall source for identifying current customer business issues and priorities.

What’s been your experience?

Download guide on which documents are most useful and which sections to read within those documents.

Research and preparation are critical for successfully engaging and selling with buyer’s side perspective.  Download this Finding the Information to help guide you on which documents are most useful and which sections to read within those documents.

US Letter (PDF 1,389KB)
A4 (PDF 61KB)

TIPS TO STREAMLINE YOUR RESEARCH

1. Annual Report to Shareholders
   The principal document used by most public companies to disclose corporate information to shareholders, this single best source of information usually includes the Letter to Shareholders, financial data, market segment information, new product plans and information by lines of business.
2. Forms 10-K and 10-Q
   Focus on these sections:
   Item 1 Business Overview for an explanation of the account’s business.
   Items 7 and 7a MD&A where management is compelled to disclose market risks and address the tough question “What went wrong last year?”
3. Proxy Statement DEF 14A
   Focus on these sections:
   Report of the Compensation Committee -What performance metrics are used to compute executive bonus and incentive plans?
   Board of Directors - Are any board members also associated with another customer? How could this relationship be leveraged?
4. Analyst Reports
   Most public companies are followed by one or more financial analysts whose reports include the analyst’s opinion of the company and an outlook on future performance. Look for recently dated reports labeled ‘Initiating Coverage’ or ‘Reinitiating Coverage’ to identify more comprehensive reports.
5. Management Presentations
   Typically found in the Investor Relations section of a company’s Web site, these files provide a unique opportunity to hear customer executives talk about their business in their own words. Look for original files or transcripts with names like ‘Investor Presentations’ or ‘Analyst Call Q&A.’
6. Press Releases
   Focus on Earnings Releases (there are usually 4 per year), and any releases addressing management changes, strategy or current events.