Let’s face it: sometimes it is good to know more about a prospect than his website or promotional literature can reveal.
A project they contacted you about simply sounds too good to be true. You may have some suspicions about the prospect, maybe you you think that that old industry gossip is about them and want to clear that up. Or simply, you are curious enough to want to find out as much as you can about the person that wants to do business with you, there is nothing wrong with that.
Since so many business people nowadays understand the idea of keeping their account as clean as possible, especially when it comes to the internet, sometimes you must use little known ways to discover your prospects secrets and find out whether you want to work with them or not.
Internet is a great way to find any information, we all know that of course. But apart from performing typical searches you can do one more thing, read between the lines. You can check and analyze how your prospects promotes his business, whether they invest money into it or try to do it on the cheap. You can find out how they handle clients and vendors and what they think about your prospect. You can also discover how they treat their employees and what opinion their past workers have about them. Actually with a bit of imagination and creativity you can find anything you want, and sometimes more.
I have been running a thorough research on prospects practically from the start and quite a few times it saved me from entering a business relationship with someone whose intentions were far from clean. From prospects known for not paying to business in liquidation looking for getting stuff done for free to people interested in stealing your product or idea, I think I have met them all over the last couple of years.
Here are few of my favorite and most effective ways to discover a prospects darkest secrets:
Google your prospects employees
People like to talk and fair chance is that your prospects present or past employees post information about the company on their blogs, websites, twitter or facebook page.
Google their vendors’ Twitter and Facebook accounts
There is a chance that if something went wrong in the business relationship the vendor has posted information about it there.
Ring their sales team pretending you’re interested in their product or service
Sales people will tell you anything. By asking clever questions you can get details you won’t believe!
Google their address
Often companies trade under a different name they have been originally registered with. If that turns out the case with the prospect you’re researching, google their main name. Most likely this method will reveal a lot of legal information on them.
Research your local companies registration office
At least here in Ireland CRO posts information about each company’s directors, also accounts, when the last ones were submitted and many more. Of course you won’t find any financial data there but at least you can check who owns the company and if their accounts are up to date, which is an important information in itself.
Research their domains
Use services like whois to see if you can get additional information or other contact names the domains are registered under. This search may not reveal much more than some additional names to google further although I once managed to find quite an interesting information about a prospect which prevented me from making a big mistake.
Check your industry forums if your prospect was ever mentioned
Once I was contacted by a magazine looking for our services. I remembered about a scam magazine going around my industry a while back. A quick search through the forum in my niche revealed that it was exactly them who contacted me. Thanks to this we saved a lot of time and obviously money.
Of course I am not suggesting that you should be researching every prospect that comes your way so thoroughly. Nor I claim that all prospects have something to hide. From time to time though you may find yourself in a situation where an extra bit of knowledge may save you from entering a business relation with someone you should avoid.
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