How and where to look for leads in the USA

[CarderPlanet]

My name is Vlad Podolyako - I am the CEO and founder of Belkins. We are engaged in b2b lead generation and appointment scheduling for sales departments. We work in the markets of North America and Western Europe in more than 50 industries.

I would like to share my business model, company structure and insights on building lead generation processes, using tools in solving problems faced by Soho and SMB, not only in the CIS, but also in Europe and the States.

Command​

Belkins has three main customer service departments: Research, Internal Sales and External Pre-sales.

• The External department includes: SDR, account managers, email copywriter and spam specialist. The department performs the task of setting up outreach campaigns, writing marketing templates, preventing them from getting into spam, qualifying leads and scheduling hot meetings.

SDR is about more than sales. This is working with a pool of clients, monitoring their results, consulting, and so on. Each SDR is responsible for the success of its clients .
The team is trained, but since they are not engaged in active sales, but rather in setting up and maintaining the outbound sales channel, they act in most cases as a CSM to work with future customers.

• The internal department serves as a customer acquisition and sandboxing function for new SDR managers who have not yet gained the experience necessary to work with leads on behalf of customers.

My partner and co-founder of the company Misha Maksimov has already shared tips for cold email newsletters with examples of our templates.

This is actually a very broad topic, so I would like to reveal it even more, tell you where and how to search for contacts, how to structure the database and customize the mailing list. I will do this using the example of the work of our third lead search department.

• The research department deals with leads search, validation, analysis and segmentation. Without exaggeration, this is the core of our company. The quality of the data it delivers affects the results of the support department and the sales department.

The guys work with data in the following way: marketing analysis of industries, formation of ICP, search and creation of a base for lead generation.

Compilation of target audience (Ideal Customer Profile)​

The basic contact information includes the contact's name, title, company, mail and any other information that helps to personalize the offer.

For example:

• The number of employees.
• Active hiring.
• Technology stack (language, frameworks, and so on).
• Annual revenue.
• Monthly website traffic and so on.

Belkins database example

The first stage of lead generation - ICP definition​

At this stage, it is necessary to compile a database that will be maximally tailored to the needs of the client.
This helps to identify key positions in the company, show the main "pain points" of the target audience of the client and cut off all irrelevant segments.
Accordingly, until the ICP is formed, there can be no question of personalization of letters, a well-defined business message and a unique proposal.

Typeform and Trello​

To determine the ICP and save time for the client and ourselves, we made a special form. After the client fills it out, the form goes to our Research Trello Board, where the team receives tasks and starts working.

On average, it takes 24 to 48 hours to process ICP for test leads. This is necessary so that the client can see what the finished base looks like. Thus, we also give him the opportunity to try to make appointments on his own.

Research Trello Board

Starting to work with a client, we conduct a niche research and form a list of companies that meet the requests specified in the ICP.

Sources for search​

For our research to be as effective as possible, we use the following sites:

• LinkedIn - allows you to view companies, employees. This is far from the only source, but it gives open access to contact information that companies themselves publish for the purpose of networking and interaction. It also becomes an excellent platform for outreach in the future.
• Crunchbase - contains information about companies, attracted investments, founders.
• BuiltWith - voluminous information on startups and technologies.
• AngelList - Provides information about investors and companies.
• Clutch.co - information about most of the service companies is posted here, there is an assessment of the quality of their work, articles, rates, reviews from customers and partners.
• G2.com, Capterra.com - most of the grocery companies are registered here. Reviews of their product and work are also available.
• Zoominfo, Datanyze - on these sites you can find information about technologies: segment them according to their popularity among companies, see technical data and profits.
• SimilarTech - Lets you search across web technologies for ecommerce, widgets, content, marketing and more.
• Google My Business - For finding small businesses in the States.

Decision maker (decision maker)​

When the list of companies is collected, it is necessary to identify the decision maker.
If you already have clients, learn more about the structure and processes in their company (perhaps some points will be common to the industry).
When you are 100% not sure who is your decision maker in the company, contact several employees and ask them already in the mailing list, at the qualification stage.

Study the structure of the company​

To determine the decision maker, first study the structure of the company that you want to include in the outreach list.
Check out the pages: "About the Company", "Contacts", "Team", view the authors in the blog. This will help you figure out who should be emailing.
If you can't find the information you're looking for on the site, take a look at the company's LinkedIn profile . There is a page for almost any company, startup or professional in the West. You just need to use the search, enter the name of the company you are interested in and view the employees.
As a rule, top management constantly replenishes their profiles with up-to-date information, so it won't be difficult to find the right person.

LinkedIn is now more of a job search and recruiting platform than it is to find contacts or leads. Many companies create LinkedIn Pages to build their online presence. Therefore, sometimes you may not find the data you are looking for simply because it is no longer published in your profile.

Fortunately, there are alternatives in the form of other, more local platforms.

Xing​

This is an analogue of LinkedIn, popular in Germany and the countries of the DACH region.
The service has more than 15 million users, so it cannot be called the first professional network - in comparison with the same LinkedIn, where about 500 million users are registered.
But in Europe, Xing is very successful - the number of users from DACH regions in Xing (13 million) exceeds the number of DACH users on LinkedIn - there are only 11 million.

Comparison of Xing and Linkedin

How to increase conversions for a demo, call or meeting​

1. Check the activity of companies​

If a company fits all parameters, this does not mean that you need to send letters right away.

For example, if the social media profiles of this company are inactive, the last materials were published six or more months ago, and the content on the blog has not been updated for three months, you will not receive an answer and will only waste your time.

2. Identify non-growing companies​

In this case, LinkedIn Insights is your best friend, because it shows the hiring schedule, the number of different positions in the company, and growth over the last 1-2 years. Insights are provided with Linkedin Sales Navigator - $ 80 per month.

Linkedin Insights

Case: You are outsourcing or outstaffing. The company has five openings for Android developers, and the number of iOS developers has tripled in the past three months. This clearly makes it clear with which proposal they should write.

Email verification​

So, the list of companies and contacts is ready. The next step is to find and verify your email.
There are many services for searching email.

Every month we find more than 50 thousand contacts, and it is important for us that the services are efficient and easy to use. Therefore, our choice has settled on the following instruments:

• Hunter.io is one of the main search tools for corporate personal email. Works well, it has mail validation functionality inside.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator is an extension we use when choosing email manually. It helps you find your LinkedIn profile right from your mail.
• We also use Snov.io and other Hunter alternatives, but this is a topic for a separate article.

When looking for personal mail, there are several options.
1. Parsing
Using Dux-Soup, Phantombuster and Google Spreadsheets, pick up Gmail emails that will be the same as Twitter and Facebook URLs. Oftentimes, Twitter accounts are added to a LinkedIn profile.
2. Point, single requests
The Google Chrome extension Name2Email and LinkedIn Sales Navigator can be used to pick up your personal mail - if you know the full name and email service. The main services are Gmail and Outlook. With the right selection, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter will catch up.

Selection of personal mail

When the base is formed, it is the turn of the mailing.
To configure it, we use the Reply service. It helps automate outbound mailings and optimize your email experience.

The key to successful mailing is:​

1. Database.
2. Customized boxes.
3. Personalized templates.
4. Value proposition.

Never waste 10 minutes checking all the variables in your database to make sure you don't make any mistakes.
It is advisable to do this in the interface of your sending tool, in order to avoid problems due to missing encodings, Cyrillic and spaces.
This often happens when exporting a database from CRM.

Remember to respect your email provider's limits.
Proofread the content for spam triggers - this is all necessary so that your letter does not end up in spam and all your work done is not in vain.

We send no more than 300 letters from one mailbox per day and set an interval of more than 100 seconds between letters.

If you have already got into spam or want to know how to properly configure mailing lists and warm up your domain, write to: vladislav@belkins.io . I will be glad to answer your questions.

(c) Vladislav Podolyako - CEO Belkins