How to contact the right person when you're prospecting

KarenMontaldi

Hi friends!

During another forum discussion it was brought up the issue of sales and finding the right person to contact when you're prospecting. My biggest issue with sales has always been finding the "right" person to contact. I don't like wasting people's times, and there's nothing worse than sending a detailed email to someone who isn't really the person you should be contacting.

So the question is, how do you guys make sure you're contacting the right person?

how

Dmitry

KarenMontaldi My biggest issue with sales has always been finding the "right" person to contact.

That's a tough one, isn't it? I think it all boils down to knowing your target market and how the clients in that target market operate.

I can't tell for every industry, but a lot of times people who're in charge of marketing are often the ones who're in charge of translation/localization or at very least in charge of finding an agency where their company can buy these services.

Of course, it's always a hit and miss when it comes to doing sales over email (where misses are more frequent than hits), but over time it should get better.

Dmitry

KarenMontaldi I don't like wasting people's times, and there's nothing worse than sending a detailed email to someone who isn't really the person you should be contacting.

I would also advise against sending a "detailed email" at first. Maybe it's just my personal thing, but when people who I've never met dump several paragraphs of detailed information on me via email, in 99.99% of cases they're going straight to my span box.

As a potential client I don't need this information overload. All I need to know what's in this for me and where can I find more info if I'm interested or what further steps I should take.

This can be done in 2 small (3-4 sentence) paragraphs.

But of course, that just me. Perhaps in other countries people love receiving 56 page PDFs from prospective service providers where they go over their services in great detail. ?

Dmitry

But, yeah, I think the key to finding the right person to contact lies in knowing how your clients operate from the inside. You need to understand how they structure their company, who has what responsibilities, etc.

It's hard at first, but it get better with time, I think.