Social prospecting when done right can do wonders for your business. If you are looking to save time, energy and money, you need to start talking to the right businesses and more importantly the right people within those organizations. This can be achieved through the power of social prospecting!
Let me ask you this, have you ever received a cold email from a sales professional, who really seemed to understand you and your business’s needs? Are they reaching out at the perfect time and really solve a major issue you face? If so, you have been prospected by a pro!
Now, on the other hand, we have all received cold emails from people who have no idea about our needs and are just wasting our time, trying to sell us a solution to a problem we don’t have. In this case, we have been prospected by an average Joe![Tweet “Learn how to social prospect like a B2B pro!”]
We are here to help take your social prospecting game to the next level. We will provide you with one great tool and two social networks with almost unlimited prospecting potential. By the end of this article, you will be able to generate more prospects than your business can handle.
Now it’s time for you to go from average Joe to social prospecting pro.
Let’s jump right in…
Email Finding Tool
I use https://hunter.io ‘s free account and it’s plugin to make prospecting a breeze.
This tool is free to try and works great for finding an email address. I have no affiliation with them and there are other options out there but, this is what I use for prospecting.
That’s right! I’m sure you are well aware of the “professional network” with its 500 million monthly active users. LinkedIn is growing at a staggering rate of 2 new signups per second. If you are not leveraging LinkedIn in your B2B social prospecting, you are leaving money on the table. LinkedIn is a wealth of Information on your prospects. I’m about to show you how to tap into that info and make it work for your business.
In this example, I will be prospecting owners of roofing companies to sell my service to.
Step #1.
Log In to your LinkedIn account and do a search for the type of business you are looking for.
In this case, we are looking for roofing companies. That would look like this:
Search Roofing Company > Select Companies > Click Roofing Company You Want To Target
Step #2.
After you click on the company you want to target, you will land on their LinkedIn Page.
Now, Click through to see the list of employees with LinkedIn accounts.
Step #3.
Find the owner or the position you would like to target.
Then, Click Hunter.io box to add this prospect to your lead list.
Step #4.
The Prospect is added to your Hunter.io lead list of potential prospects.
Click Find Email & Save
Step #5.
Now you can go to your Hunter.io account and access your leads.
Now that you have this prospects email address you can send them a targeted email requesting a meeting or whatever goal you would like to accomplish with them. You now have the right person and direct contact with them, without much work at all. (Less than 1 min.) You can do this on a major scale and really generate some targeted business.
Twitter is another great social network for finding potential prospects, with its current 328 million monthly active users. What’s great about Twitter is you are able to get involved with a company by liking, re-tweeting and messaging them, without targeting a particular person at first. This will show you a number of things such as what their company is all about, what content they are interested in sharing and will provide you with their contact info such as website etc.
Again for this example, I will be using my free Hunter.io account and I will be targeting roofing companies.
Step #1.
Start by logging into your Twitter account and perform a search for your target company types.
In this case, it’s “Roofing.” Search Roofing > Select People > Select Roofing Company To Target
Step #2.
Now here is where the magic happens with Twitter. You can fully engage with this company by liking, re-tweeting and tweeting at them. The reason why this is Important is that it shows that you are a human and you care about what they are doing. It will also give you fuel for later on down the road when you are having meetings with them. You will know things about their company only someone who did research would. This goes a long way with prospects, because it shows you care.
Step #3.
Visit their website and use the Hunter.io plug-in. As you can see 167 email available for this company.
Step #4.
Do a Google search for the CEO
Step #5.
Enter the CEO name into Hunter.io
As you can see there is a bit more manual work involved with social prospecting on Twitter but, when done right you can net major results. In less than 2 min I was able to find the personal email address to a CEO of a major roofing company. Again I wouldn’t start selling him right away; I would use this info and set up a meeting or something along these lines. Very powerful!
As you can see, social prospecting is all about using the right tools for the job and being able to identify potential prospects. I hope you found this to be valuable and if you enjoyed this content please share it on social media.
Now get out there and start social prospecting…
Zach Radford
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- Social Prospecting Like A B2B Pro - June 21, 2017