LinkedIn is a great tool for B2B sales, however, it doesn’t have everything that I need, so I am forced to build a list by hand. I
Step 1 – Quick Pass Through LinkedIn
I usually have somebody on Fiverr, make a very quick pass across LinkedIn. This can be done fairly cheaply on a per lead basis.
Step 2 – Top 100
I go online to look for articles that have the phrase “Top 100 (fill-in the blank)” or “Best Golf Courses in America” or something similar for the category. I will then create a list of all of the items that look promising, and I will have somebody on Fiverr scrape those into a spreadsheet for me.
Step 3 – Industry Associations
Once I have that completed, I will then move to industry associations. Sometimes you can be lucky enough to find an industry association that has published their entire directory online period.
This doesn’t happen very often, but on occasion you’ll find a gem here. Depending on how badly you want the list, you can always join the industry association as long as getting a digital copy of the list is a benefit of membership.
Step 4 – Comb Individual Sites
Back on step two, I found a whole bunch of URLs. From here, I have somebody go to each one of those URLs — one by one — to try to find names and email addresses for the contacts I am searching.
Step 5 – Smile and Dial
I have exhausted just about every other scalable opportunity to develop the list. So I am left to pick up the phone and call these locations to see if I can learn more information.
These calls are not the most scalable thing in the world, but they do end up yielding a huge amount of insight into the organization.