On the first day back at work following the Labor Day weekend, Bobby Darnell and I tested the links for his upcoming Sept. 10 webinar: Prospecting for Geniuses — at things other than prospecting. ?He provided a snapshot into his methodology to gather worthy contact names and start the relationship-building process, without intrusiveness, and by using quiet times when you won’t be selling, communicating, or doing much else of any use.
Darnell’s favorite tool for business-to-business marketing is LinkedIn, coupled with Google. In his conversation, he showed me some techniques to data-mine within LinkedIn and access distant third-degree contacts where the system doesn’t provide much in the way of useful personal information. Darnell doesn’t pay for a premium LinkedIn account, either.
One technique, he says, is to use the keyword function to capture your initial list of prospects, and then search the available job title information and prospect’s first name and last initial provided by the LinkedIn search. ?Almost always, this data is enough to pull the full listing from LinkedIn — and you have the beginnings of contact data.
(You can try this yourself easily with the LinkedIn advanced search function.)
Next, he shows us how to capture the prospect’s email address, again even if it isn’t publicly obvious. He suggests several tools, requiring different levels of finesse, but certainly no money.
Finally, he shows you how to start communicating to these new prospects, to begin the process of converting them into real contacts, meetings, and relationships.
It is quite a journey, but I could see how anyone with an ounce of selling interest — who doesn’t want to waste time on endless searches — and certainly doesn’t want to waste time on conventional cold calls — will find this process to be useful.
Darnell will be using live examples during the webinar, and again, to respect privacy, we won’t be able to record the event. However, he will provide a comprehensive PDF to participants explaining the nuts and bolts — and will make himself available some one-on-one consulting after the event.
His presentation is at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 10. You can learn more here.
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