Uncovering Contact Information Responsibly

Uncovering Contact Information Responsibly

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 73 of the business development podcast. And today we are going to help you track down contact information. We've identified the right targets, but now what, how do we find them? Stick with us. I'm going to tell you all about it.

Intro: The great Mark Cuban once said business happens over years and years value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal.

And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world. You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners. CEOs and business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business.

Brought to you by Capital Business Development, capitalbd.ca. Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast. And now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 73 of the Business Development Podcast. And I am just still running on a little bit of a high. We just got back from small business week coffee with the chamber hosted by the Edmonton chamber of commerce.

This was hosted at Roger's place, capital business development, the business development podcast. We had a bloom bookkeeping with us at work office furniture. One of our sponsors sent some people down to hang out. We just had an absolutely rockstar, amazing, amazing, amazing trade show. Thank you so much Edmonton Chamber of Commerce for the work you guys do.

You guys are awesome. You know how I feel about you. We, we chat about it all the time on the show, but my gosh, the level that the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce works for for its members to put on amazing events is really next level. Honestly, just another gigantic shout out to Ken Gee and Amin Samji for another amazing, amazing event.

It was crazy. It was so cool. And I love those in person events where we get to meet you guys. We had so many fans came by and let us know what they thought of the show and that they appreciate the work we're doing. And that was just such a cool, cool thing. It was our very first event with Capital Business Development and the Business Development Podcast.

So it was really exciting. Me and Cole had an absolutely amazing time met a ton of really cool people and honestly just had a blast. So I'm still riding that high a little bit here going into episode 73, but it's a good place to be. It's a good place to come into a show. We also gave away a pod mic and the winner was Zohra Khan of Content Collective.

We are getting in touch with her. She she won our prize draw and that was so cool because hopefully we'll get to get A podcast out there for somebody by providing a road pod, Mike, which was very cool. And we appreciate doing, and we love to help the podcast community and the business community.

However, we can, we have a lot of updates. My gosh. We are heading into. 88, 000 downloads. By the time you listen to this if it's October 18th of 2023, we have crossed 88, 000 downloads, guys. We are, we're crushing it. This is this is amazing. We never really saw the trajectory of the show and what it might look like, but Over the past, you know, six months, we've really seen the show, frankly, take off.

And it went from, yeah, maybe like 30, 000 downloads, somewhere in there, to literally 88. We're going to be crossing 90, 000 downloads in the next couple of weeks. And soon it'll be 100, 000 after that. And then on, on our way to the, to the half a million. And we can't wait to get there. And we appreciate each and every one of you, especially those of you who have stuck with us, who've kind of been through the growing pains and I know this show, we were just talking about it today, how the show, you know, if you listened to episode one and then you come to today, it's, it's a very different show.

There was a lot of learning and you know, I've gotten a lot better at speaking to this mic with time, but it definitely took time. And I appreciate each and every one of you that have stuck with us and continue to promote the business development podcast, because we couldn't do it without you. We just couldn't, the show would not survive without you, our lovely listeners, our amazing expert guests, and we appreciate each and every one of you.

So thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for sticking with us and onwards and upwards. So if you are just coming to this today, and this is your very first episode of the business development podcast, first off, welcome. Amazing to have you. Thank you for coming. There are also 72 previous episodes for you to go back through.

So we have an absolutely gigantic catalog now of episodes that you can go back to with lots of great entrepreneurial stories, with lots of amazing business development advice and expert advice. And we encourage each and every one of you to go back and listen to some of that previous content because guaranteed there's something in it for each and every one of you. Just a heads up as well. We are also accepting sponsorships. So we are thankful. We have atWork Office Furniture who has sponsored us. We have Hypervac Technologies. We have Bloom Bookkeeping and we would love to have you too. So if you were interested in sponsoring our show, getting some sponsored advertising on here, we would love to have you.

I'd love to have that conversation. So feel free to reach out at any time. And I wanted to let you guys know as well, we are now fully up to date on YouTube. If you prefer to listen to your podcast on YouTube, if that is you, we are there. So we're not up there as fast as we are on you know, our standard podcast platforms.

Just not the way it works. There's more work involved with getting our shows up onto YouTube. But we are making the effort and even if we are a day late type thing, we will be on YouTube within about a day of release. So just to give you a heads up, if if that's where you like to listen, fret not, we will be there and you will be able to get us on YouTube studio or YouTube music or wherever else you like to listen on YouTube.

All right, well, that is it. We have gotten through, we have gotten through our lovely introduction. We had so much going on. This has been such a crazy day and I know that you should never want to use like Kelly get on with it. I'm on with it. I promise. It's just been a wild one. And I appreciated all the people that came by our booth today.

Thank you so much. If if you swung by and said hello, I appreciated that. And we appreciate having each and every one of you as listeners. All right. Episode 73. I wanted to do one that we haven't. Really touched on how the heck do we find contact information and I know I know I can't believe that we've gone 73 episodes And I'm sorry.

I've left you guys hanging With how we track down contact information. We've tracked down the leads. We've we've done our digital introductions now What I know I kind of neglected this a little bit But we're going to get to it today and believe you me, I'm not going to make you pay a dime to find this information.

I know there's lots of ways you can pay to find the information. I get it, but I'm going to teach you the ways that we use at Capital that don't cost you anything. They're completely free and they're incredibly, incredibly effective when you're trying to track down the contact information of people that you're trying to find and get in direct contact with.

So we live in this wonderful day and age of the internet and. On the internet, unfortunately, for better or for worse, our contact information is just out there for someone to find and I'm going to teach you today some of the secrets we use in business development to find these and you know, I know that there are lots of options out there for you to pay for this.

And I've had lots of people write into the show and ask, like, well, you know, why don't you just pay for that information? It's available, but like. I don't know. I don't know. There's something about paying for that information that I've been reluctant to do and I think a lot of it is just because I know how to find it.

I've spent a better part of a decade plus trying to find people's information and I've gotten really good at it. So I'm going to try to teach you today ways that you can do this for free because I don't think you should have to pay for contact information and I get the sum of it. Maybe that is the way it's got to go, but I think there's a lot of ways that you can find this information without paying and we're going to go over that today.

Yeah. So obviously, one of the most important things in business development is contacting the correct person. Attaining the direct contact details is absolutely critical to your success in BD. But how? How do we find it? Okay. So number one, we need to identify the LinkedIn, add that contact, send a digital introduction, and if they respond...

Simply ask them. You would be surprised. A lot of people respond when you guys send your digital introductions. This is why we start there. So, if you guys know, if you guys have gone through the process, you've walked through the business development process on this show you know that I love to start with creating the target list, identifying the right people in a company, and then sending a invite to them on LinkedIn.

And then from there, once they accept, I like to wait about a week and then send a brief digital introduction of myself and then briefly that I'm working for XYZ company and I think they might have a product you're interested in. Please check out the brochure. And I just attach a brochure. I just peak a little bit of curiosity and I attach that brochure for them to check it out.

You would be surprised how many people simply respond back. Amazing. Thank you for sending this. We'll definitely look into it, which you can then respond. Hey, do you mind if I send you a Formal email better introducing the products and services of this company. Do you mind just sending me your email?

Do you mind just giving me a good contact number to reach you at? You would be surprised how many people are more than willing to just give you their contact details and let you reach out to them. So, you know, if you want to make it the easy way and you guys have done this, feel free to just simply ask the contact that you've made to provide you their contact details, because let me tell you what I bet you, I would be willing to bet you that at least.

25 to 50 percent of the time, you can straight up get their contact details this way. So feel free to use this avenue as an easy way to get the contact details. And then, as you know, the moment you have those contact details, what did that LinkedIn digital introduction become? It became a weekly contacted stage company and you move them one step down the CRM line, now we're in the weekly contacted stage and you follow up with them until you either get your meeting or you disqualify, but.

The, the only difference between that is you got to get the contact details. So that's step one. You can do that simply using LinkedIn. Okay. All right. So now that we have them and, and let's say, let's say this, this didn't go this way. You added them on LinkedIn, you sent the information, you got nothing back.

Okay, great. You're still not in a rough spot. You got them on LinkedIn. Now it's time to get the hunt to start, start your hunt, right? Ultimately there are contact details on LinkedIn. You may or may not know this. Every single person on LinkedIn has a contact information card, which they may or may not have populated.

But you would be surprised how many times I go into the contact details. And guess what is right there, their direct mobile number. And their corporate contact information or their personal contact information. I'm usually a little bit hesitant to reach out to people on a personal email because I don't know, I don't like getting reached out to on my personal email.

So I look at it from that standpoint and there's other ways to find the emails, which I will show you later on in this episode. A lot of times there are phone numbers. And boom, if you got the phone number and you get it and you get them on the line or you get them to their answering machine, they are now also in weekly contacted stage and you can move them that one step down the line.

Okay. All right. So we've checked LinkedIn for contact details. Now we need to Look for location if they don't have it. Like, let's say now you've hit there and they don't have that. You've gone into contact details. There's nothing happens all the time. Get it. There's a lot of smart people out there. They don't put their information.

That's fine. So you are still not in a rough spot. You know, the company they work for most likely, you know, their name. And if you hop on LinkedIn again, you can look at their location history. So. Not location history, I should say, but the location that they say that they're in. This works a lot of the time, because typically, people tend to work in the same locations as their offices, right?

They work in the same locations as the offices. So, if you know what location they're in, And you know their name, and you know their position in the company, and you know what company they work for, simply hop on Google. And Google, XYZ company in Wisconsin, XYZ company in Edmonton, XYZ company in Ottawa.

And then, just try calling that company. Just try calling it, and say, hey, I'm looking for John Smith operations director, is he there? And you'd be surprised how many times, even if you get the wrong location, they'll know exactly who John Smith is, and they'll say, No, John works out of... This office in Calgary, you should call this office in Calgary.

Oh, amazing. Do you have the number for that office? Yeah, yeah, right here. And they'll just give you the contact details to that office. So. I hope you're starting to see that business development and finding people's information is not that hard. It's not. It's not. Does it take some detective work? 100%.

Have I told you guys that business development is like little detectives from the very beginning? Yes, I have. Business development has detective work involved. You have to be able to follow the leads, follow to the next steps, and just, as long as you keep executing, calling the next office, calling the next place, Asking for John Smith, you're going to find him.

You are going to find John Smith, follow the breadcrumbs, follow the hints, and you will find him. And it's just, it just takes effort. It takes dogged effort in some cases, especially depending on the size of the company. And as you guys know, not all companies are friendly to helping people. And I've, you know, I've run into that many, many times.

There's other ways that you can go about doing it, but the secret really is in people. So. You just have to get to the right person. The right person in any organization will give you either the contact details to who you want to get to, or we'll be able to let you know where to look, but sometimes it might take a couple, three tries to figure out who that is or to go to the right spaces.

But, you know, I've had situations where I got blocked by the reception. Where I knew they had a call directory. And so what I did is I knew I was going to get blocked by reception or they weren't going to give me the number. So I hopped in the call directory and I found somebody in operations or I found somebody in HR and I just straight up told them, Hey, I'm Kelly.

I'm working with this client and I need to get ahold of John Smith. How can I do that? Can you help me out? And they've just given me the phone number or they've given me the email. There's always ways. There's always ways to find them. So as long as you go into it with that standpoint, I'm going to find the contact information for this person.

Mark my words, you will find it. We live in a time where finding just about anybody's information is possible. So the biggest thing that you need to be successful in finding information is you need to have that Determination. You need to have the confidence that you can find it, and you need to have the determination to follow the leads until you get to where you need to go.

But mark my words, if you do these things, you are going to follow the leads, you are going to get to where you go, and you are going to get to the contact you need to get to. But it takes persistence, it takes determination. You do those two things, mark my words, you will be successful. Okay, so... Now you can use automated systems to your advantage.

So I kind of just talked about this previously. Let's say you got stonewalled by reception. They're not going to help you. Okay, no problem. You could do two other things. You can try another branch and ask reception at another branch who may help you. Or you can use the automated systems to your advantage.

We live in a time now where almost every larger corporation has an automated directory system, which you can. Typically track down somebody at least close enough to find what you want. So you need to learn to use these automated systems to your advantage. And I found that most of the time, no matter the size of the company, these automated systems, for the most part, we'll get you where you need to go.

You know, I've had it so easy sometimes that I only called the automated system once, and I got directly to the person I wanted to talk to. It just transferred me directly to the direct line or their cell phone or whatever. And I could leave my message or I could take down the extension. And now they're in contact made stage.

And now I can do my weekly followup until I either disqualify or get my meeting. So automated systems are your friend. Don't shy from them. I know they're. Flipping annoying, but believe me, they are your friend and you can use them to find the right people. And we live in a time now where there's less and less doorways or not, not doorways, sorry.

There's less and less blockers in your way. There used to be a lot more blockers when there was no automated system and you just had to go through a reception and the reception was typically told to screen calls for certain people. That is happening less and less and less. So I guess what I'm getting at here is that it's never been easier to find that contact information.

Just use your detective skills, use the automated systems to your advantage. Don't be afraid to use them and try to get to where you need to go. You'll be surprised. You will find it a lot of the time. Okay. All right. The other part is we need to make sure that once we do use the automated systems or we use reception and they give you the extensions and the direct lines that we are updating our CRM.

Okay. We need to make sure that our CRM is being updated with the direct extensions, with the direct line numbers, with the direct emails, as you're finding them to make sure that the next time you come around next week, the week after. You're not having to go through this process again, right? We do not want to have to repeat this hunting process.

Cause as you can imagine from what I'm kind of discussing here, it can take time. This can be one of the time the time takers of essentially the work you're doing in business development is using your detective skills to be able to track these people down. We don't want to have to do it twice. So make sure that you are taking down the data, you're updating your CRMs effectively as you're going, and that you're never having to do this step twice.

The reality is the faster that we can get through our contacted list, the faster we can call 15, 20, 30 people and ask for that meeting, the more effective you're going to be a business development. If you're wasting your time hunting here, trying to track down people's contact information two times, three times, because you didn't write it down, mark my words, you do not want to be wasting your time that way.

Use... Use your head and make sure that you are updating this information as you are finding it as soon as you're finding it so that you do not have to do it twice. Okay you know, I talked to this briefly in the beginning reception nowadays, I would say reception is more your friend nowadays than they ever have been.

I've never seen reception as good as it is today. And so. I don't know whether that's just like a changing of the demographic of receptionists or what it is, but typically now if you call an office and you ask for somebody, it's very, very rare that you are going to get screened. If you get the right office and they actually work there, very likely you are going to get transferred.

Very, very likely you are going to get transferred to the right person. So don't be afraid to ask the receptionist. Don't be afraid to make the calls because you think you're going to get screened or blocked. Yeah, it happens. Still happens, of course. But believe me, it happens a lot less now than it ever did, especially not when at the beginning of my BD career, like screening was a real problem and I would say that it has become less and less of a problem over the last four or five years.

So don't be afraid. I think you're going to get screened a lot less than you think. And just simply asking for the direct contact you want to speak to, introducing yourself, introducing your company and why you want to talk to them is going to, is going to be enough to get you to the right person. Okay.

Alright, now what's another way? I talked about this really, really briefly at the very beginning of the show, at the very beginning of the business development podcast, I was talking about utilizing the website. The website is an amazing place to not only track down the right person you might want to speak to, but there's a lot of situations where the websites even list the phone numbers and the emails of the people that you want to reach.

So A good place to start, if you haven't started anywhere, and you know the company you're after, is to simply go to the company webpage, go to the directory, and see if you can't find the right executive that you're looking to get in touch with. Because I think you'll be surprised that a lot of websites not only list the executive, but they list their email, their direct line, their cell phone number, like, It's actually impressive the amount of information now that is on a lot of companies websites, and it's a great resource to use when you're tracking down that contact information for the first time.

So website is another amazing resource that you can utilize to get through to the right people. Okay. What's one that you know, I've seen a lot more effective as of lately, and I don't really like to name drop. This is a tough one, because I don't really like to name drop companies that sell people's information.

Just not a huge fan of that. Just not, just not. I know I'm in business development and I should be. But the reality is, it's like, I believe that tracking down people's information in an ethical and right and kind way is the right and best way to go about doing it. And so I would always say that if you, once you've exhausted all other options, there are, there are ways that you can use it.

I'm going to name drop one company that does this right now. It's called Rocket Reach. I do not pay for Rocket Reach. Straight up, do not pay for it. Don't even have a free account. The way that I use Rocketreach is to find the email address format for a company so that I can try one or two different email structures, just in case I can actually get through to the right person.

This is stupid effective, by the way, I, I almost hate, I almost hate to admit a little bit how effective it is just because of my bias towards. Paying for information. If you type in almost any company period, and you say email format, rocket reach in Google search, one of the first links you're going to see is rocket reach.

com, and then you're going to see the company. And when you click that, what it says is don't worry about all the pay crap. Don't worry about any of that. You don't have to pay for anything of this. Just look at. It gives you three or four of the most used email addresses formats of that company. And let me tell you what, the one that's higher percentage, the one that's in that like 80 to 90%, 95 percent of the time is right.

It's right. And so if you know the person's name and you can see the structure of the email address, boom, you just got the email. And this is where using the internet to your advantage in 2023 is absolutely critical. And there's more information out there than ever to be able to find the contact details of the people you want.

Yeah. This one isn't going to give you the phone number. Could you probably pay to get it? Probably I, you know, me, you know what I feel about that. I don't like it, but maybe you could. However, if you have their email, I don't think that it's necessarily wrong to still do an email introduction in a direct way.

And I would do this in a formal way, just like I would, if I asked their permission, I would send them a formal introduction of whatever company I'm working with, introducing what it is we do. Why I think it could benefit them in a personal kind way and then say, I would love to chat about this further.

Would love to line up an email or a face to face meeting and you can get me back at this. And once you have it, once again, they're in the contact made stage, move them into that weekly follow up until you either disqualify or get them. I would always say wherever possible, make sure that you're trying to get them on the email or on the phone number.

Sorry. You know, email is great, but we screen our emails, right? We always screen our emails. You know, I regularly screen my emails. So, there's a lot of emails that come to Kelly Kennedy, and they come to Capital, and they come to the podcast that I recognize are probably a marketing ploy or a scam, and I just delete them, because I don't, I don't have time.

I frankly don't have time. I'm incredibly busy, and I just don't have time to deal with scam mail. And there's a lot of people that are going to feel the same way about what you're doing. The way that you make it not scam mail, Is that you get them on the phone first and you make that introduction via phone wherever possible.

The LinkedIn digital introduction, if they respond and say, please send it to this email, just as good as a phone, still counts. But wherever possible, you should be working to get them on the phone so that you should be reaching out to do whatever offices they work out of. If you can get their cell number, call them on their cell number, introduce the company formally, ask them permission to send them a formal introduction.

If you get that, you're going to get no issues. You're going to get what you want. And most likely you're going to get a meeting. Remember you need to be humble. You need to be kind and you need to ask for permission wherever possible. Hey, do you mind if I send you a formal introduction to XYZ company, and then I'll follow up in a couple of weeks if that's okay, and we can line up a meeting.

Then does that sound good? Yes. Amazing. Let's do it. So that is the way that this works. Most of the time, make sure that you are using the resources available to you to get the information. But remember a personal touch through phone is always going to be the best option moving forward. Okay. So whenever, whenever possible, when we can be personal Make sure that you're reaching out and you're having that voice contact.

That's going to be the most effective for you. All right. So obviously we talked about updating our data as we find it. This is incredibly critical. You know, I mean, I know I've said it multiple times in this episode, make sure that you're updating your CRM. Not going to say it again. As soon as you have the information, update it and make sure that you don't have to chase that information twice.

Okay. All right. That brings us to the end of today's episode. So remember being good at business development, it takes persistence. You don't need to pay for info. You can find almost anything you need on the internet. Tracking correct contact details can be much easier than you think. And I believe in you use the resources available to you.

Be persistent, be determined, and you will find success. All right. That brings us to the end. Shout outs for today. Chris Ecklund, Ken Gee, Andy Baqone, Cliff Turner, Colin Harms, Rodney Lover, and Tim Rella. Appreciate each and every one of you. Thank you so much for all of the support and ongoing support. We appreciate you greatly.

Until next time, this has been episode 73 of the Business Development Podcast. We'll catch you. On the flip side.

Outro: This has been the Business Development Podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry. And founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation. And business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.