Prospecting for startups
Posted on May 08, 2021
This post is about creating a comprehensive list of B2B prospects effectively. It contains my learnings and best-practices on that matter. The biggest value of this process isn't only the accumulated data, but what you'll learn about your future clients along the way.
In case you're conquering a new market with a new product, you have to understand that market first. I'll cover that in another post soon.
Open up a browser and have a spreadsheet ready, let's go!
... or any other search engine will be your best friend.
- Lists of companies, e.g.
german automotive companies
- Market reports, these usually contain lists of relevant companies, e.g.
mobile mapping market report
- Landscapes, a compilation of logos, e.g.
austrian ai landscape
- Countries, e.g.
car dealerships malaysia
- Figure out hashtags your prospects typically use.
- Search recent posts with these hashtags.
- Check profiles who reacted or commented on the posts and learn which companies these people work for.
10-K's
Other sources
- Trade commission websites. Some of them provide extensive lists of companies by category.
- The partner/customer/testimonial section on companies' websites.
- B2B-matchmaking and other online events.
Which data to collect?
- The most essential piece of information you’re looking for is the link to a company’s website.
- The e-mail address of a contact person, or otherwise a generic office@.
- If you're going international, check in which country the company's headquarter is located.
- Notes. You're going to notice interesting facts about the prospect when browsing through websites that will help you later on.
Maximize learning
- Write down how how individual prospects can benefit from your product/service.
- Write down what you've learned and surprised you.
- Write down what you don’t know yet (known unknowns).
- Try to put prospects into categories. This will make it easier to create tailor-made content for the outreach.
Hacks
- Want to go fast? Only collect links, extract the details later on.
- Learn to scrape data off websites. I recommend the Web Scraper Chrome Plugin