4 ms·

I’d like more help with step one. Just finding the contact information. I’ve tried connecting over linked in and never gotten a response.

goatherders 7y ago
There are hundreds of tools available for finding everything from email addresses to phone numbers to physical addresses for work. Apollo.io, Hunter.io, LeadIQ just to get you started. Most have some tier of "free" if you only need a handful of contacts per month.
- minkzilla 7y ago
  Who does one contact at random medium size or big sized company?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Please do not phone. Maybe that's not universal, but I basically don't pick up the phone if I don't recognize the caller--or at least think because of area code it may be someone I should answer. With my work number and never check messages case, I don't even have a physical phone attached to my line.
  - georgespencer 7y ago
    I am a grumpy git, but… Please also do not email. It feels like every week I'm removing my corporate contact information from some obnoxious website which sells my email address having not obtained my permission to store or process it. Presumably somewhere, long ago, there was a CEO or founder who responded positively to cold outreach from a Ukrainian outsource dev team or Indian QA company, but I find all cold outreach to be unwelcome. Making it more personal just means I have to type my "politeno" text shortcut instead of "gdprsmash". People celebrate and mythologise the 0.1% of cold outreach success stories and ignore the fact that 99.9% of it is irritating spam.
    - goatherders 7y ago
      Your %'s are off by a startling amount.
      - georgespencer 7y ago
        I assume you think the utility derived from cold outreach spam is even LOWER than I ballparked? :)
        goatherders 7y ago
        To the contrary, proper cold outreach can result in qualified opportunities for 2-10% of prospects contacted.
        georgespencer 7y ago
        Seems a bit like moving the goalposts. I'm saying that in the aggregate, cold outreach is annoying and unsuccessful 99.9% of the time. You're saying that's wrong because proper cold outreach "can" result in qualified opportunities (not even sales!) for 10% of prospects contacted. In any event, your best case seems to be that 90% of people are at best unmotivated enough to ignore the message, and in all likelihood would rather it hadn't come in the first place.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
dannyw 7y ago
LinkedIn is too easy. It is not the place for cold outreaches, unless it is one small part of a recruiter's outreach strategy. With enough dedication you should be able to find some contact details.
jonfw 7y ago
firstname.lastname@company.com has worked for me in the past. When I was in college I met a CTO at a campus event and emailed him this way, ended up being offered a job.
- ghaff 7y ago
  That's not really a cold outreach though. LinkedIn can be OK if you can send a message of the form "We met at XYZ and talked about ABC..." Though I'll not infrequently miss LinkedIn messages simply because they go into a Gmail tab that I don't make a point of checking--and most of the LinkedIn messages I get are very ignorable. You can usually find the company email convention, as you say. (That specific example wouldn't work in my case though and, for larger companies, email collisions mean there are a fair number of non-standard addresses.)

goatherders 7y ago

There are hundreds of tools available for finding everything from email addresses to phone numbers to physical addresses for work. Apollo.io, Hunter.io, LeadIQ just to get you started. Most have some tier of "free" if you only need a handful of contacts per month.

minkzilla 7y ago
Who does one contact at random medium size or big sized company?
ghaff 7y ago
Please do not phone. Maybe that's not universal, but I basically don't pick up the phone if I don't recognize the caller--or at least think because of area code it may be someone I should answer. With my work number and never check messages case, I don't even have a physical phone attached to my line.
- georgespencer 7y ago
  I am a grumpy git, but… Please also do not email. It feels like every week I'm removing my corporate contact information from some obnoxious website which sells my email address having not obtained my permission to store or process it. Presumably somewhere, long ago, there was a CEO or founder who responded positively to cold outreach from a Ukrainian outsource dev team or Indian QA company, but I find all cold outreach to be unwelcome. Making it more personal just means I have to type my "politeno" text shortcut instead of "gdprsmash". People celebrate and mythologise the 0.1% of cold outreach success stories and ignore the fact that 99.9% of it is irritating spam.
  - goatherders 7y ago
    Your %'s are off by a startling amount.
    - georgespencer 7y ago
      I assume you think the utility derived from cold outreach spam is even LOWER than I ballparked? :)
      - goatherders 7y ago
        To the contrary, proper cold outreach can result in qualified opportunities for 2-10% of prospects contacted.
        georgespencer 7y ago
        Seems a bit like moving the goalposts. I'm saying that in the aggregate, cold outreach is annoying and unsuccessful 99.9% of the time. You're saying that's wrong because proper cold outreach "can" result in qualified opportunities (not even sales!) for 10% of prospects contacted. In any event, your best case seems to be that 90% of people are at best unmotivated enough to ignore the message, and in all likelihood would rather it hadn't come in the first place.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]

dannyw 7y ago

LinkedIn is too easy. It is not the place for cold outreaches, unless it is one small part of a recruiter's outreach strategy. With enough dedication you should be able to find some contact details.

jonfw 7y ago

firstname.lastname@company.com has worked for me in the past. When I was in college I met a CTO at a campus event and emailed him this way, ended up being offered a job.

ghaff 7y ago
That's not really a cold outreach though. LinkedIn can be OK if you can send a message of the form "We met at XYZ and talked about ABC..." Though I'll not infrequently miss LinkedIn messages simply because they go into a Gmail tab that I don't make a point of checking--and most of the LinkedIn messages I get are very ignorable. You can usually find the company email convention, as you say. (That specific example wouldn't work in my case though and, for larger companies, email collisions mean there are a fair number of non-standard addresses.)