When you begin to work on expanding your sales pipeline - the first sales technique to implement is to know who to call as this can save you a number of hours of calling and achieving nothing. There are a number of sources you can use to get your lists for free, but before you start - please make sure you have completed the previous tip of identifying your target market.
Having mostly done B2B sales in Canada, I have retrieved my lists from sources relevant to the Canadian markets, here are a few I have used for the Toronto area:
- Top 1000 public companies - list of companies measured by revenue (you do have other options to try
- Top 350 private companies - look for companies that are 100% owned by one entity or family (ex. Jim Pattison Group, Home Hardware, etc.)
- Scotts Directory - free-trial on-line or you can obtain unlimited use at some Canadian local libraries, employment centers, or municipal business centers.
In addition, for international markets, try these:
- Wikipedia - list of companies listed by categories (ex: geographic regions, industries, etc.), narrow down from that list, or you can simply write "list of companies in __(state region/location)__"
- Linkedin - this link takes you to the 'search companies' tab, you can specify and it will show all the companies registered with linkedin throughout the world. On the left there is a deeper dive where you can narrow by other categories, these are the ones I like:
- Location - you can be as broad as saying 'United States' to as narrow as a small city like 'Albany, New York, United States'.
- Industry - this is an easy one to select because it will be your target market - like healthcare, education, etc.
- Company Size - really important as are you selling in the SMB or enterprise space.
There are others, namely Jigsaw and Hoover's, which I shall write in a future blog.
A rule of thumb I use is revenues by companies - typically for every $300MM in annual revenues there are approximately 1000 employees. I find this to be the most useful statistic than the profit margin or amount of profit made. You can of course do the math (proportional math? I forget the name) - so if a company claims they have 50 employees - they are probably $15MM in annual revenues.
Market size is much larger than you think
There are many other resources you can use to find companies, one thing I’ve always underestimated in any role is the scope of the market is larger than I initially estimated. That’s probably due to the fact that the developers of products & services are usually not the salespeople (unless they are the founders) they are more the ‘technicians’, who have had experience in their field and made the product/service to overcome those challenges that come in their role.
Thanks - this week I will probably post one more blog - look forward to feedback!
There are many other resources you can use to find companies, one thing I’ve always underestimated in any role is the scope of the market is larger than I initially estimated. That’s probably due to the fact that the developers of products & services are usually not the salespeople (unless they are the founders) they are more the ‘technicians’, who have had experience in their field and made the product/service to overcome those challenges that come in their role.
Thanks - this week I will probably post one more blog - look forward to feedback!
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