If you are one of those Sales executives whose daily work is to pick-up the phone and start calling a random list of leads your Manager has provided you, this blog post is especially for you!

It is a known fact that companies receive a lot of daily emails and phone calls regarding software sales and web design/SEO services. Instead of convincing you to buy, these random calls only end up annoying customers. Many go out of their way to block such numbers or list them in their “spam” group.

The question is how do you increase Sales Outreach, customize it for your target audience and convert them into consumers.

You have to find the opportunities around you and use them to get your work done.

1) LinkedIn

This is Internet and nobody can stay hidden if they are using their real name for collaboration. So, LinkedIn is my first choice when I need to find information about someone.

LinkedIn has over 259 million registered users, which makes it the first recommended place for recruitment since you can find any one you want – with all the contact details you need for interaction.

i. Company Search

Suppose I have to sell software that helps Hospitals to record their patient’s record, “Electronic Medical Record (EMR)”, I found ‘513’ Health & Medical companies in UAE registered on LinkedIn.

The target is to reach companies which are:

1. Not happy with their current software.
2. Don’t use any software.
3. In need of a better Software with more features.

ii. Individual Search

You have got a list of companies that may be interested in buying Electronic Medical Record. Now, search for related persons within that company such as the CEO, COO, Finance head or HR manager. Once you have short listed the individuals, connect to them via LinkedIn.

If they accept your connection, you’ll get access to important contact details such as:

• Email
• Mobile no.
• Office phone no.
• Twitter handle
• Blog URL
• Personal website URL

What else would you want? Try to contact them and schedule your first meeting 😉

Remember, word your e-mail to address your customer in a personal way and show him his benefit. E-mailing at the right time and to the right person also increases your chances for success.

Note: you can only send 3000 connection invites, so choose wisely.

2) Email Blast

Email blasts can still work if done properly.

1. You need to find the right email addresses.
2. Consider using Email Marketing software.

i) Rapportive

There are of course many ways you can use to find email addresses but a good success rate comes by sending right emails to the targeted email addresses.

Connection through LinkedIn may take some time. If your targets can be achieved through email collaboration I would recommend you to use a tool called Rapportive. It is one of the fastest methods to gather email addresses of company employees – if you know their names.

Rob Ousbey of Distilled created a handy tool to find anybody’s email address – the video attached below is worth listening to:

Resource links:

You may read his complete post here or download the tool here: bit.ly/name2email

ii) LinkedIn

Yes, LinkedIn again! You may also insure the right email address through LinkedIn by using LinkedIn’s “Outlook contacts import” feature as discussed by Irina Shamaeva in her post “Find Almost Anybody’s Email Address with #LinkedIn”

3) Twitter

I’m sure you would have at least one satisfied customer. Go to their Company Twitter account and note down the potential companies/customers which are following the company’s Twitter page that could be interested in buying.

Send them an email and tell them you have a satisfied customer that their company is following on Twitter. Further explain how long they have been your customer, what you did for them and what that customer says about you. This ‘bandwagon effect’ establishes trust and helps your potential customer relate to your services.

i) All My Tweets

Yet another way of finding email addresses, All My Tweets!

What you need to do here is “Sign in with Twitter” and put the person’s Twitter username into the Get Tweets field. It will start loading all the tweets made by that profile, for example, I was able to find the email of Will Critchlow in just a few tweets.

You can “Hide Retweets” as it will not contain that person’s email address.

4) Freelance websites

Usually on freelance websites like Elance, Freelancer or oDesk, budgets per project are lower than average. Most companies can’t work with such budgets and professional workers can’t think of it.

I’m an SEO Consultant living in Dubai, UAE – and I charge at least 5000/- AED (~ $1350) a month to run an SEO campaign, which is neither high nor low. But, I found a good number of interesting projects from these freelancing websites.

Here is what I did:

As I already told you the outreach methods above in point #1, #2 and #3, I found details of the relevant person – as outreach is a part of my job and I’m professional in my work 🙂

You’ll have to create accounts on Freelance websites and search for projects of your interest by filtering for a specific “service” or “country name/city name”. If someone has posted a project and he is living in UAE, I can find the contact details and schedule an in-person meeting with him (via e-mail or phone call).

Remember, an authentic project will always have a proper name or at least a website URL which is a way to reach the Management team of the company.

Hope you enjoyed the blog post. I would be happy to hear your thoughts.

Cheers,

Kumail