Prospecting seems like the last thing you want to do during a time like this. But Covid-19 is nearing it's end. It's going to be more competitive than ever. Local transient leisure business will be the first to come back. After that, it will be corporate transient. We need to proactively target this corporate business.
Here's How
Step 1: Prepare The List
- Sign up for google docs
- Get a gmail address
- Create a sheet
- Format the sheet
We want to track:
- Market Segment
- Organization
- First Name
- Last name
- Job Title
- Website
- Email address
- Date You Added Them to List
Step 2: Before You Start Building Your List
The Job Title Is The Key.
Contacting the wrong job title can give you discouraging signal that is incorrect. Often, the go-to response is “not interested” or “do not contact”. When you have the right person, you’ll know because they are at least open to discovering more, about 20% of the time, if not more.
One of the hardest parts of getting your internet prospecting campaign going is finding the right job title(s) for each market segment. This requires some trial and error and like any experiment, you need to carefully measure and then track your results so you focus more on what works.
Therefore, plan for the most effort and most discouragement to take place in the beginning because you are not likely to target the right job title off the bat.
One way to increase your chances of success is by using the waterfall technique.
You start a couple of job titles higher than you think you need to and you ask “who would be the best person at your organization to speak to about this” - we’ll help you more with your prospecting messages later, this is just to help you get an idea of what the waterfall technique is. They will then refer you to the right person. This helps you find out who the correct job title is for future contacts in other organizations later.
Another technique you can try if the waterfall technique isn’t working for you is to target 3-6 people in the same organization. Ask them all who the best person to speak with is. The chances that one of them will tell you who is much higher. Use this technique with caution though as these are people you might not be able to message in the future if they all tell you they are not interested.
Step 3: Building the List
When you know the job title you want to target, you can begin to build your list.
We recommend that you do not outsource your list building or give it to an assistant especially at first. As well, do not attempt to buy lists as they are often sold to many people and the contacts will be less likely to respond to you favourably. You also run the risk of spamming people.
Building the list is one of your greatest chances to learn and recognize patterns. You’ll see trends and gain important insights as you build the list that you just wouldn’t find any other way.
How to build the list:
We recommend using three key tools in building your list. Google, LinkedIn and a tool called Hunter.io
You’ll use google to search for websites of companies in your target list. For example, if the market segment you want to target is construction, you can search “construction companies in my city”. Note: We recommend you search for companies within your entire state and neighbouring cities as well.
Hint: If you aren’t sure which market segment to start with, look into the corporate emails inside your PMS (front desk system). This will give you a clue into which organizations have already been staying at your property. You can google the names on LinkedIn to find their job titles as well. Your past business is the best clue to where you will find future success.
Next, find the organization on LinkedIn and use the filters to identify the contacts for that organization who match your target job title. Find their name. At this point, you can update your google sheet (in google docs).
Add the following information:
- Market Segment
- Organization
- First Name
- Last name
- Job Title
- Website
- Date You Added Them to List - As today’s date
All you are missing is their email address.
Step 4: Finding A Contact’s Email Address
While you are on the organization’s website, you can use Hunter.io to pull a list of email addresses for people who work at those organizations. Note, Hunter is free for your first 50 email requests, then only $49 per month for the next 1000.
Go back to LinkedIn and find the contact’s name who matches your ideal job title.
If you are lucky, you’ll be able to find that person’s exact email by typing their first and last name into hunter while searching the company. If you cannot find it, you’ll be able to see the pattern of emails.
For example, you’ll be able to see if the organization formats their emails like this:
"first.last@company.com" Or "firstinitial.lastname@company.com"
You can guess their email and see if you are right using the Email Validator tool. Once you have their email, add it to the list.
Congratulations!
You have learned one of the most important steps in internet prospecting.
Most people who prospect online don’t target job titles and that’s where they go wrong. Targeting the right job title for each market segment is absolutely one of the most critical keys to success when prospecting.
If you are able to, we recommend you add 20 people to your list, 5 days per week. It should take you 1 hour a day. Remember, roughly 20% or more should reply, so you’ll be getting 20 interested replies per week this way.
The first step in prospecting success is to consistently build good lists of new prospects. You now know exactly how to do that. We recommend you start today, creating a list of 20 contacts by job title for your first market segment.
In the next post, we’ll teach you what to do with your list of contacts. We’ll show you how to send personalized emails at scale, what to include in the email, tools that can save you time and more.
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