As promised, here are the additional five sure-fire strategies guaranteed to give you some potential success at getting closer to acquiring most people’s contact information. As I mentioned in Part 1 of this 2-part post, acquiring pertinent contact information can be difficult. However, it is an obstacle, not a dead-end, on the path towards getting your resume in the right hands, speaking to a person of interest, pitching the final decision maker, etc. So don't get frustrated when you can't find a person's information easily. Get clever instead.
- These are professional sites similar to Capital IQ and Bloomberg. However, the focus of these sites is more informational and less financial. They are less robust, and cost less to subscribe to (I think Plaxo is actually free (though I am not sure how much different it is from LinkedIn). Hoovers tends to have contact information for most companies. Redbooks information can be dated and sometimes you will see information for someone that hasn’t worked at a company for several years. I have never used Spoke, but it always pops up in Google when searching for people. I would appreciate any insite on Spoke from anyone who has used it.
- A recent study showed that if Facebook were a country, it would be the 4th largest country in the world. With numbers like that, odds are the person you are looking for is on Facebook. So look them up. See what information you can find. Perhaps you share a friend. Maybe you will learn where they went to college. If so, ask a friend that also went to that school to look them up in their alumni network for you. I would suggest you DO NOT try and friend random people on Facebook, however. This may hurt your cause and make a cold contact even less interested in communicating with you. Use Facebook for research and to learn about a person, not to start a relationship with them.
- I have found that some key executives have begun using twitter to share their insights, work-related anecdotes, lunch habits, etc. Start following people you are interested in talking to. Not only will this help you learn more about the company and the person, Twitter allows you to do something that you can’t do as easily in LinkedIn or Facebook. Twitter allows you to tweet to someone directly. Send a quick note to your contact and give them a reason to tweet back. It could be a great first impression if you can say something relevant in less than 140 characters.
- 10-Qs/10-Ks
- These financial documents are made public for all publically traded companies. While they may seem long, scary and confusing, they are not as complicated as you think. And for most of you, you can ignore a majority of the information within. Try searching these documents for key executive names and see what pops up. You may end up with email addresses, corporate addresses, etc.
- Guessing
- Guessing has worked out very well for me. For the most part, email addresses at companies follow consistent formats (i.e. first.last@company.com, firstinitial.last@company.com, first.middleinitial.last@company.com, etc.). If you are able to find the email address for one person, chances are you can guess the email address of the contact you want to reach. I have had great success guessing and getting my information in front of the right person. I do get Mailer Deamons from time to time, but when those come, no one knows but you!
These tactics have worked. I have tried all of them. I have had more success with some than others, but I have reached most of the people I have tried to contact. If you have had success with any of these strategies, please share. If you have better or different ideas, I’d love to hear them too.
0 comments:
Post a Comment