Who makes it to my list?

Written by Vibha Bharaddwaj

Within hours of publishing my blog last evening, I received an email from an entrepreneur who is totally confused as to which one she should do first,

the prospecting or building a list.

“Whom should I call, when I don’t even have a list of phone numbers or emails to reach out.” said the mail.

First, it’s a very valid question and the answer is simple – focus on building your list.

What does it take to build one?

List building involves capturing information such as name, designation, email Id and company info.

This is essential as using this list, one has to make calls and get a meeting appointment.

You may ask who qualifies to be in this list. Can anyone and everyone become a part of this list.

Absolutely not.

Only those people make it to the list, who meets the criterion of the right target audience.

Before building the list, following are the four most important activities –

Define the criterion for the right target audience.

For example – a medium sized company, with 200 Crore annual turnover, with 1000 employees, in the automobile sector.

2. Find all those companies that meet the criterion

3. Research and find people in key decision making positions in those companies.

For example – Head of Production, Head of Engineering etc..

4. Collect the contact details of the above using Social Media platforms, or Google, or their websites or through some other known contacts.

Can list of contacts be sourced for a fee?

Yes.

The list can be –

(a) sourced from agencies. There are agencies that sell it for a cost but then you need to know what kind of list are you looking for else you may be taken for a ride.

I bought once and I found more than 50% of the numbers/emails were just old and not working.

(b) Influencers – there are people who have built their tribe and are sitting on a massive database of people. You can approach them and see how much will they offer their list for.

Again a word of caution, you need to be absolutely clear regarding – you are reaching out to the influencer in your domain/industry and that they actually have a list that is worth paying for.

Read the fine print.

(c) Platforms – There are platforms that host several influencers and you can use their paid service. Something like YouTube.

(d) Build your own list – if you are some one who is new and are on a limited budget, I suggest you work towards building your own list.

Understand this, you have to keep growing your list so that you always have people to reach out, connect and engage with.

If you are an Entrepreneur, dedicate sometime of your day for this activity.

This is one of the best practices that we follow in our startup too!

Who makes it to my list?

Who makes it to my list?

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