A 15-minute pre-call research checklist for sellers
Most pre-call research fails in one of two ways. You spend two hours and walk in with a folder of facts you can't use, or you spend two minutes and walk in with the company's tagline. A checklist with a time limit fixes both.
This is a 15-minute pre-call research checklist for sellers who sell to engineering teams. It works for a first call and for a follow-up. Each step says what to look for, where, and what to write down. For a longer account, see the strategic account plan.
The checklist at a glance
| Step | Minutes | What you write down |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Check fit | 2 | Does this account match who you sell to? One line, with a source. |
| 2. Find why now | 4 | The one or two newest changes, each with a date. |
| 3. Confirm the people | 3 | Who is on the call and their role, with the date you checked. |
| 4. Check the tools | 2 | What they run that relates to your product, and how sure you are. |
| 5. Look for blockers | 1 | Anything that could end the deal early. |
| 6. Write your questions | 3 | Three to five open questions and one goal for the call. |
1. Check fit (2 minutes)
Before you research anything else, make sure the account deserves the next thirteen minutes. Open the company's site and its newest job posts. Do they have an engineering team that matches your buyer? Do they work in the area your product covers? Write one line: "Fit: runs a platform team of at least 20, hiring reliability engineers (job post, Oct 6)." If the answer is no, stop and move on. The call may still happen, but your preparation is different.
2. Find why now (4 minutes)
Look for the newest change that bears on your product:
- Job posts for roles that own the problem.
- An engineering article or conference talk about a related project.
- A new leader in the team you want to reach.
- A run of incidents on the status page.
Write each change with its date. If a source shows no date, write "undated" and treat it as a lead. If you find nothing recent, write "none found"; that is a fair answer. The article on buying signals explains which changes hold up.
3. Confirm the people (3 minutes)
For each person on the call, write their title, their part in the deal, and one fact about their work. Check that they still work there, using a source updated this year, and note the date. If you don't know who will be on the call, write down the role types you expect, and add "who else should join?" to your questions. When the account is large, see how to find the right person at a large company.
4. Check the tools (2 minutes)
Look at job posts and the engineering blog for tools that sit near your product. Write each tool with where you saw it and a strength: strong if the company says it, medium if a job post asks for it, weak if you only saw it once. Where to find out what tools a company runs lists the places to look. On the call, say "I saw a posting that mentions X" in place of "I see you use X" unless the evidence is strong.
5. Look for blockers (1 minute)
Ask what could end the deal early. Is the company in a regulated industry where a review comes first? Does it run a stack you don't support? Is there a recent vendor consolidation? A blocker you know about in advance becomes a good question. A blocker you meet in minute twenty becomes a surprise. If the buyer is a bank or similar, see how to prepare for a first call with a regulated buyer.
6. Write your questions and your goal (3 minutes)
Turn every gap into a question. Open questions teach you more than yes-or-no ones. "How do you handle on-call across teams today?" beats "Do you have alert fatigue?" Write three to five, most important first. Then write one goal for the call, such as agreeing who joins a technical review, and one fallback.
What to leave out
- The company history. They know it.
- Funding news, unless it changes what they can buy.
- Personal details. Keep to work: role, team, public work. Nothing about private life belongs in your notes.
- Anything that would be true of any company. "They are growing fast" does nothing for you.
A copyable version
Pre-call research checklist
- Fit
- One line, with source and date.
- Why now
- Newest first, each with a date. Undated means lead.
- People
- Name, role in the deal, one work fact, date checked.
- Tools
- Tool, where seen, strong / medium / weak.
- Blockers
- What could end this early.
- Questions and goal
- Three to five open questions. One goal. One fallback.
When the call ends, add what you learned to your account plan, so the next checklist starts from more than a blank page. To turn the checklist into a page you read just before the call, use the meeting brief format.
Where Repclose fits
Repclose does the first pass of steps 1 to 4 across a whole list of accounts. You upload your accounts and a sales profile; it ranks them and, for the top-ranked accounts only (the top 10 by default), lists about 10 people and gives the top 5 a profile check and a short card on why they might care. Each point links to its source, with the publication date where one is available. Steps 5 and 6 are yours, because they depend on what you want from the call.
See what the output looks like in the sample brief, or try it on your own accounts.