For any startup, the process of searching for those first foundational customers can seem daunting. Scaling a product when you’re starting from zero certainly isn’t easy, but there are a wide variety of powerful tools available today that can make the process simpler and more effective. BostInno’s third annual State of Innovation forum includes an all-new workshop series, and one of these classes—led by General Assembly Enterprise Account Director Tom Liou—offers advice on how to find prospects and get that crucial first meeting with them.
The first step, of course, is to create a target list—and to source accurate contact information for those individuals. Ahead of his in-depth workshop at State of Innovation on June 16, Liou provided some sales tips on that particular process. With this guidance in mind, any startup can begin to build a robust pipeline and stand out in the marketplace.
Don’t underestimate LinkedIn Premium
When you’re looking for prospects to build out your target list, you need both their names and their titles for prioritization purposes. Liou’s top sources for finding this information are company websites, press releases, events lists and last but not least, LinkedIn bios.
“To be candid, the main tool for most people is LinkedIn,” says Liou. “For salespeople, though, it’s critical to have robust search capabilities. So any startup should consider investing whatever the cost is to upgrade their account.”
Always try to go to the top
Oftentimes, startups assume that the best strategy for getting their foot in the door is to seek out someone at the bottom of the organization and work their way up. But Liou cautions that this isn’t actually the ideal route.
“It’s always, always, always preferable to start out with the highest-level people you can, and if you get delegated down, so be it,” he explains. “But it’s much harder to climb up the ladder from lower-level executives.”
Identify mutual connections for a two-way intro
A key component of prioritizing your targets is seeing if you have any mutual connections with them. Luckily, when you do a search on LinkedIn, it will automatically organize search results based on those shared relationships.
“It’s always easier to facilitate an introduction with a mutual contact,” says Liou.
But if you want to get in touch with someone at a company, and you have one friend in common with that person, he emphasized that a two-way introduction is typically far more effective than a cold email saying “Hey X, meet X.” With a two-way intro, your mutual connection contacts your target to gauge their interest in talking to you first.
Target groups instead of individuals
Once you’ve sought out a high-level stakeholder at an organization, Liou suggests identifying several people that they might work with directly either on their team or a related one. On LinkedIn, there’s a particular algorithm that populates a list of recommended individuals. This list shows professionals who are, based on the users who look at that particular person’s profile, viewed the most.
“You should probably be able to guess pretty quickly five or six people on their team that they have day-to- day contact with,” Liou added. “And that’s a great way to make sure you’re clustering an entire business unit or functional team, as opposed to just betting on one individual.”
Be creative when looking for contact info
Once you’ve singled out a high-priority target, the challenge becomes searching for their contact information. Some of Liou’s go-to sources beyond the obvious like Google and company websites include Data.com, Mailtester (which determines if an email is valid), and the Gmail plugin Rapportive.
Liou has one additional hack for finding contact info, which can come in handy at big enterprises that have a phone screen or just make it hard to hunt people down. Call the main company hotline late at night when you know it’s unlikely that anyone is still at the office. Usually, there’s an automated dial-by-name feature. Because that person probably isn’t going to pick up their phone, your call will go directly to their voicemail. And nine times out of 10, the voicemail recording will offer up an email address for any urgent matters.
For more educational insight into the sales process, be sure to attend the workshops at State of Innovation June 16.
Image of sales professional at computer via Shutterstock. Photo provided by Tom Liou.
