10 Points of Info to Find When Qualifying Leads

In the Finding Leads Series within this blog, there's a common denominator in finding leads through Google. Simply google "_________ near me" and fill in the blank with the niche. Every time you'll find the leads you're looking for. But in these posts, I largely stop there. True, you can find phone numbers, web sites, addresses, and company names at a minimum. 

In this post, I'm diving a little deeper on the info I look for when doing these searches, specifically using Google's tools.

I look out for the following information:

• Church's name
• Address
• Phone
• Website
• Any email addresses
• Contact names
• Size
• Budget
• Pictures
• Other pertinent info on the property

Let's take these step by step.

Church's name, address, phone and website:

As you can see in the above screen shot from "churches near me" Google search, Google already returns quite a bit of information to you. You can clearly see the church's name, address, phone, and website.With this alone, you can call them, you can mail them, and you can visit them.

Emails:

Most churches do have email addresses published somewhere within their website. Typically this is found within an About Us or Staff or some link or sub page like that. If you cannot find it, there are clues or resources you can use:

• Wayback Machine (Internet Archive) - you can pull up archived versions of the site. Sometimes you can find old listed emails. You just need to verify through their staff listing, if available, whether or not the person still works there.
• Seamless.ai  - If you have LinkedIn and subscribe to SalesNavigator, then you can use LinkedIn to find email addresses. Simply search for the organization's name and viola!
• Hunter.io - Another great hack to find email addresses. Search via the URL and you'll see past emails that appeared on their site.
• Look for patterns - Usually organizations have a format for their emails. For example, some are FirstName@. Some are FirstInitial.LastName@. Some are Firstname.LastName@. If you can grab ahold of one, you can apply that pattern to others.

Contact Names:

Like with emails, you can apply the same to find contact names. Look within their Staff section, About Us, or similar. Also, in this example with a church, look in archived church bulletins. It's not uncommon to find contact info in there. You can also look on LinkedIn for others associated with that. Not listed above in Emails is another resource: ZoomInfo. They have a wealth of info on contacts.

Size of the Property

Evaluating the size of the property is very important to know. Is your ideal client 5,000 square feet? 10,000?50,000? You'd want to prequalify them as a lead before spending any money on them for marketing. If I don't know the size of the property and want to get a general idea, I'll use either Google Maps or Google Earth to see a satellite view and a street view of the property to learn more. 

So in the example above, I went to GoogleMaps.com and searched "Churches near me" and Google's local map came up showing nearby churches. I then clicked on the Satellite View option and zoomed in on the nearest church. This is the result. I share this because it's helpful to know the size to prequalify that lead. As you can see in the above example, this is a sizable property. You can see the cars and get a general feel for the size of the property on a 2D level. For the street level view, click the little orange person in the lower right corner of the map. You can now drag that person along any blue-highlighted route and see a street view version of the property.

You can tell from this view that it's at least 2-floors around the property and judging by the satellite view, this is at least 40,000 sqft. Not too shabby (and yes, they were on my lead list).

Budget:

This one is a little tricky to find. Most organizations and companies do not have this info available online. Don't spend a lot of time researching this. However, some churches do publish this information. Below is an example:

The above isn't the best example, but you have the idea. In the above, building maintenance and utilities are included.

Pictures:

Finally, you can search online through their website, through social media, and other sources to get a good sense of their facility needs, surface types, and more. Not long ago I prequalified a USDA-certified test kitchen in DC. I went on their social media and saw dust bunnies hanging from the ceiling. Do you think they need my service (or someone's)? You bet. You can also look on 3rd party sites like Yelp to see if there are any complaints about the cleanliness.

Other Pertinent Info:

Aside from the above I also look at the location. Are there trees next to the windows? Trees bring bugs. Bugs bring spiders into your facility. Does this location have sister locations? Could you offer a discount to win more? Could you offer a loss leader? or in the example of church, do they have another location they oversee, like a school? Or are they running a capital campaign to raise the funds to grow their location? If they grow, you grow too.