Searching for Customers

Finding potential customers is the most difficult trick in the book of selling. If you're an automobile salesperson or a salesperson in a department store, customers come to you. If you're a "road salesperson" with a territory, you have to find your customer.

I am going to discuss three prospecting methods that I use:

1. Thomasnet.com

2. Google.

3. Manta

Today we will discuss thomasnet.com:

First, point your browser to www.thomasnet.com.

Click on the tab "Supplier Discovery"

Number 1 requires you to choose from a drop down menu. Keep the default "Product/Service Category"

Now comes the trick. You need to choose the category of product that you're looking for customers in and the geographical location they're in.

Let's say we're selling air compressors. Type "air compressors" in Box 2 "Search For".

Below Box 2 you'll see a list of all possible air compressor categories. Pick one that applies to the type of customer you're looking for.

Box 3 asks you to select "Company Type". There's another drop down menu. Pick one, like "Service Company".

Now you will want to specify the geographical location that you're looking to prospect in. Select a zip code and the radius in miles from that zip code.

There are three other drop down menus that allow you to get more specific, but if you're prospecting, you want to be as generic as possible.

This is an incredible tool.

Tomorrow we will discuss Google. And it's not as obvious as you may think.