Step 1: Research 🕵️♂️
Look up the company: see what they are working on, any compelling events, any issues your product/service can help solve, etc. After all, there are only 500 of the F500 so the least you can do is spend time on nailing your approach.
🔍Pro Tip: Have a look to see if they have a press release about them using a competitor
Step 2: Find your Buyer Persona 👀
A buyer persona is someone who will be interested in hearing out what you have to say/offer and potentially buy from you if you play your cards right.
So where do you find these individuals that could constitute your buyer persona?
➡️LinkedIn – stalking LinkedIn profiles is an obvious one, but most industries now have their own groups.
🔍Pro Tip: Go through the most successful LinkedIn Groups (those that have a lot of members and are active), look at who manages them and who are actively pushing out new content.
➡️Forums – professionals often answer questions and provide their 2 cents on platforms like Quora, Reddit and any industry-specific sites
➡️Twitter – You can search Twitter by hashtags based on common industry phrases or even hashtags for events in the industry. Find the people in these conversations and you’ll often find prospects who like to talk.
Step 3: Outreach ✉️
Once you have nailed down the list of people you want to reach out to from an outbound perspective, it’s time to do some “stalking” so you can then tailor your approach…🕵️♂️
Let’s take Leadfeeder CRO, Jaakko Paalanen, as an example:
Judging by Jaakko’s Twitter profile, I can see he actively posts about Hockey and Basketball, both of which could serve as topics to break the ice.
Moving on, I came across a recent contribution he made on Social Media Examiner. I could check it out and compliment him on his piece.
Last but not least, Jaakko has publicised his specialities on LinkedIn so if I were to send him something of value relating to those topics that could ultimately resonate with him, it would certainly help build rapport.
All in all, it took me less than 2 minutes to gather this data ⏱
Please, please, please, don’t pitch to anyone right away! Your message is likely to be ignored, discarded and the time you spent carrying out that research will have gone to waste ⛔️
Remember, if you want someone’s time, invest some of yours 🤝