Prospect research in 100 Seconds

In this article, you'll find the tricks our sales reps use while sending customised emails. This article is part of a series on winning accounts. You can read about the Art of cold emails here, and the reason why customised cold emails work better than template cold email here! We start by picking the niche. Understandable we are aware that each platform serves a different function. For instance,
  • Facebook is where we share personal life updates
  • LinkedIn is where we share professional life updates
  That being said, a lot of people use Facebook for business use. It depends on the person you are trying to get in touch. Once you have aware of the niche of prospects, this becomes clear.  

Search Google

Use various search tools to extend the level of your search. For instance, if the prospect is the COO and gives a lot of talks, try searching for <prospect's name> <"Talks" or "Keynote"> Another use of google search is to find if the prospect was mentioned by other over the internet. This will give you an insight into the image and position the prospect holds.  

Prospect's Company Website

Almost every company's website has a team page. You can learn interesting facts about everyone. Their bio will give you a brief info about them, including details such as
  • their role,
  • their responsibilities, &
  • the influence they command.
 

Personal/Professional Website

This can be rare for a lot of professionals. If you can find a professional website managed by the prospect, you may have struck gold. People who maintain a website leave out a clean breadcrumb to get in contact with them. Following their website can give you a shorter path to them.  

Twitter

Almost all professionals are Tweeter. There is a good chance your prospect has an account as well. Here is a quick sum of up type of twitter users.  

Created account but never used it

As the name suggests, they are not using twitter currently.  

Frequent visitors but rare participants

They open up their twitter account once in a while but never tweet anything. Having no recent tweets, but occasional retweets and likes is a clear sign of this behaviour. You can learn about their interests by check out the following list.  

Heavy Users

The users who tweet a lot (a couple of times a day). These type of users are more open to have a discussion. If their DMs are open you can get in touch with them on Twitter itself. However, It's more important to break the ice on twitter and go brief via email. You can also check out their pinned tweets and link in bio to learn their priorities.  

LinkedIn

LinkedIn has a reputation to be more professional of all existing platforms. There is a high chance that the prospect you are learning about, has a LinkedIn account. Every user shares brief details like their experiences, shared connection, and about themselves. This is available on their profile page. You must also be aware of two things.
  • LinkedIn notifies your prospect of your visit.
  • User's feed can give you deeper insights
  LinkedIn sends a notification every time someone visits your profile. This information is limited for free users, but LinkedIn Premium users can see the complete list. As a researcher, you can overcome this by using sales navigator. Any visits by using sales navigator are not notified to users. Recent activity of the user is like twitter or Facebook. The type of content user liked and comments on give you an insight into their interests.  

Conclusion

We have listed out five platforms you can use to get prospects information. Once you get the hang of it, you will be able to quickly open up all social media and get the relevant details. Intandemly customer gets a feed built into our platform which shows prospect's all recent social media activities. If you want to win accounts, send customised cold emailing, contact us for Intandemly demo.