You’ve got tools—use them!

Nowadays life for the cold-caller has been made exponentially simpler. I have found, on more than one occasion, that simply typing “facilities manager, XYZ Corp, Tucson” will bring up not only the contact’s name, but also an email and sometimes a direct phone number. But if not there are plenty of other ways to leverage the power of the web.
I was working a lead—a company had a 300 employee relocation planned—and all I had was the name of the company and the info “45k move planned”.
So I went to Jigsaw and got some names but none of them were handling the relocation. Finally, I got a receptionist to give me the name of the operations manager who was handling the move.
I got him on the phone and was told (and I quote), ” I can‘t make any promises as I have several vendors already interested but I will keep you posted”. I’m not a fan of hoping and praying when concrete action is possible, and so…
I went on Linkedin and typed in this person’s name. Lo and behold he had held a position at Jones Lang, a firm that my client has done lots of business with.
I called my client and got the name of his Jones Lang contact whom, it turns out, this operations manager knew very well. I called him and asked if he would call the prospect and put in a good word for my client. He did and later told me, “If he hires another mover I’ll be very surprised,”—evidently he laid it on pretty thick. The next day I got an email from the prospect requesting a meeting and now my client has a strong shot at the job. Based on the former colleague’s recommendation, I’d say it’s very likely that he will book the business.
The takeaway? Use all the resources that the wondrous web provides you.