If you want to keep up with the latest information about any of the items listed below, I want to introduce you to a tool that is powerful, free, easy to use and completely automatic. Once you set things up – which is easy – you don’t have to do anything else except wait for relevant information to come to you.

1. Your customers
2. Targeted prospects
3. Specific decision makers at customers/prospects
4. Competitors
5. Industry trends

In short, this tool will enable you to stay on top of the latest breaking news about your customers and your industry.

What’s The Tool?
The tool I’m talking about is Google Alerts. Google didn’t design Google Alerts with the sales professional in mind, but after using it for a few weeks, you’ll swear they did. You simply set up the terms you want Google Alerts to monitor and it does the rest (e.g. XYZ Co., Debbie Smith, smartphone, etc.). Any time there is new information about the terms you specified, you will be notified. How cool is that?

Some Quick FAQs about Google Alerts
1. Can I set up multiple alerts? Yes. You can set up to 1,000 of them.
2. How can I receive these alerts? Email or RSS feed.
3. Can I specify where I want Google to look for these alerts? Yes.

• A “News” alert contains the latest news articles with the search terms of your choice that appear in the top ten results of Google’s News search.
• A “Web” alert contains the latest web pages that include the search terms you chose that appear in the top twenty results of Google’s Web search.
• A “Blogs” alert contains the latest blog posts with your search terms that appear in the top ten results of Google’s Blog search.
• A “Video” alert contains the latest videos that include the search terms you’ve chosen that appear in the top ten results of Google’s Video search.
• A “Groups” alert contains new posts with the search terms you’ve provided that appear in the top fifty results of Google’s Groups search.
• A “Comprehensive” alert contains the latest results from multiple sources (e.g. News, Web, Blogs, etc.) into a single Email or RSS feed.

4. Can I specify how often I get these alerts? Yes. Immediate, daily or weekly.
5. Do I need to have a Google account? Yes. You’ll need to set up a Google account before using this tool. If you are already using one of Google’s other services, you already have an account.

Sales Tips When Using Google Alerts
I have four quick sales tips that will make Google Alerts work better for you.

1. Don’t overdo it at first. Yes, you can set up to 1,000 alerts and you can have them come to you immediately. You’ll be overwhelmed with the information. Start out with a few alerts and grow from there.
2. Set up the frequency of your various alerts by how critical they are. Information about industry trends could be seen once a week while information about a critical decision maker might need to be seen immediately.
3. When setting up your search terms you can use a dash (e.g. “-wholesale”) immediately in front of a search term to tell Google Alerts not to include any information with that term. This can filter out extraneous information you don’t care about.
4. Set up a Google Alert on your company, your boss and the relevant hierarchy where you work. This is especially important if your company is publicly traded. Rank and file employees are the last to find out about breaking news when it comes to their own publicly traded company.

Sales Blog Wrap Up
I am a fan of this tool because it automatically puts us in control of targeted sales information we could not possibly have assimilated in the past.

©2010 Scott R. Sheaffer

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3. 5 Sales Productivity Tools You Need To Know About

Tags: technology

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