Phil Lauterjung

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As promised, here are the tools that can help you warm-up your cold calling efforts.  They might even relieve some of the fear factor – come on, admit it no one really likes cold calling, and many will do anything else.  Some of these tools are well know, some not so well known, and some are very new.  With the marketplace changing at a dizzying rate, I apologize in advance if I’ve left out some players.  Please feel free to add any of your favorites in the comments section.  I always like to find out about new tools that might be helpful.

The tools that follow are generally lumped under the heading of Sales 2.0 – don’t blame me, I didn’t make that up; and, I’m still wondering when and if we move on to 3.0.  I’ve divided them into three different categories:  Building your Prospect list, Finding Trigger events, and Building Relationships.

Building Your Prospect List

• Hoovers (owned by D&B), D&B (formerly Dun & Bradstreet), OneSource, Salesgenie, and Zoominfo – these all cost money (monthly, annually, or both) and have differing features.  You’ll need to evaluate based on your needs.  If you must know, my two favorites are Hoovers and Zoominfo.
• Jigsaw, Spoke, and Netprospex are all free – sort of.  They require you to upload your contacts and then give you points to use to acquire other contacts.  All three seem to be pretty good, but Jigsaw currently has the largest database.

Finding Trigger Events

• Current leaders are Google Alerts, Twitter, and InsideView.
• Newbies with some good features are SalesFuel, LeadLander, and Active Conversion.
• Don’t forget to check the major job boards (Monster, Yahoo Hot Jobs, and CareerBuilder) to find out if your prospect is hiring and in what areas.

Building Relationships

• Linkedin and Facebook are two you probably already know about, if not join now!
• Two that work in conjunction with your Outlook contacts are Hoovers Connect and xobni, and both are free.  BTW, xobni is inbox spelled backwards – cute, huh?
• Sites that connect prospects and sales people in differing ways are salesconx, Inquisix (beta), allyforce (beta), and MyWayInteractive (beta).  All of these are currently free, or require your contacts, and are worth checking out.

If your want even more information on this topic, two of my favorite sources are Nigel Edelshain, CEO of Sales 2.0 and Jill Konrath, Selling to Big Companies.  They are both a wealth of information.  Nigel will be part of a panel in a webinar sponsored by InsideView on June 23rd.  For more info click here.

The above is not necessarily meant to be all-inclusive, but it will definitely get you started on your way to warming up those nasty cold calls.  Let me know if you have found an good resources that I’ve left out.  Happy cold, I mean warm, calling!

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