Read the Annual Report and Build Better Relationships

I had dinner last night with a friend of mine, a great A+ sales person that has earned the nickname Jimmy 10-K.

Jimmy 10-K knows more about his clients than they do. He is the person that people call when they want to know what is happening in their own company.

And he does this simply by reading his clients 10-K & 10-Q reports religiously and then using that to drive meaningful conversations. If you know how to do this, it takes very little time, but the conversations that come out of this are invaluable.

As we talked, both of us were amazed at how few "sales professionals" do this, let alone understand what this document is. In my experience, when you read the quarterly & annual reports, it is an easy way to build a new relationship or to strengthen an existing one. Whatever you're trying to sell, these documents are going to help you tell a story of importance. The best part is, for any publicly traded company, these documents are easy to get and, more importantly, in a more or less government sanctioned format so they are all the same.

Let's start with what they are. The 10-K & 10-Q are documents that all publicly traded companies must file on an annual (10-K) and quarterly (10-Q) basis. If you're in sales, CS, SDR, or ABM, these should be mandatory readings.

The quarterly report provides details on the financial position of the company, what those numbers actually mean, any material investments that the company is making or closing, and updates to risk. 10-K's are usually 50 - 100 pages long and you can generally get a good understanding of what is happening at the company on a quarter by quarter basis.

The annual report is where the good fruit is. 10-K reports tend to be longer, more detailed and review performance for the prior year and details about what to expect in the coming year. These reports aren't 4-times as long, but are pretty close because of all of the detail.

The best place to find these reports is on the SEC website, commonly referred to as EDGAR.

As a sales leader, I look at the 10-K's of any company that is in my pipeline at a certain stage (earlier is better). Not only does this help you to build stronger relationships with clients because you know their business better, it will also help you navigate the waters inside the company.

Once you get good at it, you can crank through one and get the details in an hour or so. Over the next few days, I'll be taking a look at Coca-Cola's 10-K, published in February 2019, and walking through how I look at these reports, how you can get information that will help you build stronger relationships inside of these companies, and questions that I would think about if I were a sales person on this account.