Researching prospects is an important part of the sales process. You often need to find a prospect’s information such as their email or phone number before you can connect with them. Knowing where to search for someone’s contact details can be challenging if you don’t know where to look.
Here is a collection of websites we use at VA Partners regularly when researching a prospect’s contact information.
1. LinkedIn
LinkedIn is probably one of the most useful tools for finding who you are looking for. It’s a great search tool that allows you to filter out unwanted information. By clicking the advanced search option, you can really filter results to get what you are looking for. We suggest setting the company, location and a few key words – including job title, for best results.
2. Data.com
Data.com is an open source contact management database. The great thing about data.com is how it can provide you with the direct telephone number and email address of the person you are looking for. The downside is that if you don’t have the 5 credits to “purchase” the information, you have to find a way to get some. This usually involves inputting the information of others. For each business you input, you receive 5 credits and adding a contact to the business gets you another 5 points.
3. Manta.com
Much like data.com, Manta is a great tool for finding company information for products, services and businesses. This particular website is useful when looking for information on industrial companies. Manta is a great tool for finding out company information like year of establishment, annual revenue estimate and number of employees. Just make sure that your search preferences are set to the correct country because it usually defaults to the United States.
4. The Company Website
You should be able to skip the above steps and go straight to the company website however; a lot of contact us pages aren’t really that useful. Most websites provide you with a form to fill out or an general company email address. When you visit a website the best places to find contact information is in the contact us section or the about section. For larger organizations like hospitals, or schools chances are they will have a staff directory that will come in handy.
5. Yelp
Yelp is a useful tool for finding information in the restaurant industry. Sometimes reviewers will reference the owners by name which is useful when you can’t find a contact name on the restaurant’s own website, so don’t forget to skim the reviews!
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