Vetting the Right Point of Contacts

High quality vetting can mean the difference between getting and not getting a meeting with a client. We need to do our research on the account to understand the organizational structure and who within the organization evaluates new vendors. Lastly, we need to decide the perspective to introduce to the contact to prompt a meeting.

DETERMINING POINT OF CONTACT & ALIGNING PERSPECTIVE TO STRATEGIC PRIORITIES

Once you have prioritized your accounts, you can then begin with the A accounts first and determine for each one, whom the right point of contact is going to be. For smaller MM companies this may in fact be the owner (DM). As companies get larger, they begin to formalize the new vendor evaluation process and place people within the company to facilitate this process.

Initial outreach for MM or enterprise accounts is going to be by email and you will craft a new perspective to introduce based upon the stated goals of the CEO and management team. You can also call after the third email to introduce yourself.

EVERYTHING FLOWS FROM CORPORATE STRATEGY & CORPORATE GOALS:

Read the annual report CEOs letter to shareholders as well as the 10k MD&A in order to understand corporate strategy and goals. Also search for CEO interviews where they talk corporate priorities and quote them in slide decks. This will be the perspective you introduce. Marketing priorities and goals flow from the corporate goals.

PULLING POINT OF CONTACT EMAIL & PHONE NUMBER

Once you have determined the right point of contact and the perspective that you want to introduce, you are going to need to get the contact information for that individual. Often times, your organization may already have the contact’s email address and phone number but there is turnover in companies. In order to find contact emails, you can do a simple Google search. If Google does not yield and email you can utilize Rocket Reach which will provide the email address related to the POC’s Linkedin account. Often this will be a personal email they used to create the account.

When it comes to phone number, it may be necessary to go past the office line. In order to obtain cell phone numbers, you can use FastPeopleSearch.com to pull a cell phone. You are going to need a first and last name along with a city where they live/work.

In MM and enterprise you are most likely going to want to try emailing first for the first three units of outreach and then you can start calling.