Tools for Mining
Prospects
Prospecting is a neces- sary evil if you’re going to expand beyond your eferral network to be suc- cessful. But few people njoy prospecting. They
see it as repeated rejection to uncover
that one shining opportunity.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
There are some great tools designed to
help you increase your odds of connecting with the right people and
grabbing their attention so they want
to talk to you.
You can use these tools to do everything from identifying your best
prospects to deducing why they’d want
to speak with you.
Identify the who.
Once you know the types of contacts
and companies you want to approach,
use Zoominfo.com, NetProspex.com
and Insideview.com to search and
secure names of the best contacts.
Delve.
Research the contacts you’ve uncovered. What have they written? Where
have they been quoted? Quickly get a
feel for what’s top of mind with them
and where their passions lie. Use this
information to craft your attention-grabbing value proposition.
Secure contact info.
Start with the above-mentioned sites
to find contact information. Jigsaw.
com and NetProspex.com contain the
most current details. Add a few contacts of your own and earn points for
free contact information downloads.
Find elusive e-mail addresses.
If you still can’t find an e-mail address
from your search engine, type “@their
Web site domain” to pull up addresses
for that domain anywhere on the Web.
Now you’ll have the e-mail protocol for
that company and can more effectively
guess the e-mail address.
Watch your prospects.
Monitor your top prospects’ activity
using a service like Google Alerts. Set
up a daily alert to see all of the comments they’ve made and where they’re
mentioned. You’ll know what to talk
about when you call and, more important, when they need you to call.
Make your e-mails stand out.
Use gobbledygook.grader.com to pick
out trite or hype-filled words and
phrases you don’t realize you’re using.
Increase the impact of your brochures
and online copy, too.
Know if they’re listening.
Use ReadNotify.com to find out if pros-
pects are reading your e-mails. This tool
can trace opens and forwards, number
of times read, and track how many
times links are visited, forwarded and
by whom. Use Bit.ly to shorten long
links for use on social networking sites
and in e-mail newsletters.
Increase your productivity.
If you’re a Microsoft Outlook user,
Xobni.com is a plug-in that makes
searching your inbox and finding information about your contacts fast and easy.
Getting people to reply is the most
challenging aspect of prospecting.
These tools give you new levels of
information to increase your odds of
breaking through and turning prospects
into golden business opportunities.
Kendra Lee is a top seller, prospect attraction expert, author of the award-winning book, Selling Against the Goal, and president of KLA
Group. Specializing in the small- and
mid-market business segment, KLA Group
works with companies to break in and
exceed revenue objectives. Visit www.
klagroup.com.
