What Is the Best Way to Get in Contact With Business Owners?

You’ve set up your business, mapped out a plan of workflow, established your unique service or product concept, now the only thing that’s left is to sell it. You may want to reach out to local business owners to pitch your ideas and get your gig on the road.

But a few questions arise as soon as one considers reaching out to businesses, and specifically: how do you ensure that your call, email or message won’t be ignored? Is it better to show up in person or to try out cold outreach? How do you approach the business in a way that would make it more likely for them to invest in your business?

Convincing people that they need your services specifically is no easy feat. This is why networking is such a sought-after skill in today’s sales world.

Before you explore your networking options, it’s best to ‘qualify’ your business. To be appealing to customers, your services have to be communicated clearly and have a reasonable price to quality ratio. Make sure your offer is able to compete with others business people might have their inbox filled with.

Evaluating and adjusting your business model in these ways improves your chances of potentially getting noticed, which is crucial at the start of your career.

Once you’ve done that, you can choose any of the following ways to get your business out there.

-        Go to business events in your area and come up to people with your idea. Many people prefer having a face-to-face conversation with a potential partner rather than the impersonal cold call. These events may be somewhat hard to get into and some are paid, but it’s possible to find ones in your area if you live in a big city.

-        Use social media. Many businesses regardless of size are active on LinkedIn and Facebook, so it is possible to message them there. Structure your message so that it gets straight to the point and is professional. Depending on the business your chances of getting a reply are high.

-  Turn to Sales Navigator. It's an amazing tool by LinkedIn that lets you sieve out needed people. You can save the result of your search and then paste URL into any automation tool to automate your outreach.

-  Automate your LinkedIn prospecting and add CRM

No matter how hardworking and passionate you are (or your sales team), sooner or later it will be come extremely hard to do all lead generation work manually. It takes hours to find needed people, write messages, and then track campaign performance. Then you have to weed out those who never replied and focus on those who seem promising. It should not be done manually when a whole lot of tools can take over the initial lead generation process!

Various tools like Closely or Expandi can become your great time-savers. Always opt for cloud-based automation and never extensions to avoid potential risks of being banned by LinkedIn.

Tools like Closely will help you not only scrape highly-relevant leads but also reach out to them automatically and manage conversations in a smart embedded Inbox.

With the help of such cloud-based solutions, you can run numerous campaigns targeting thousands of CEOs with your message. The greatest part - it won't sound automated or like being created by a robot given you stick to some best practices. I've applied numerous tricks and received amazing results. Folks from Closely helped me to shape the perfect message for my potential customers, most of whom were business owners and C-suit people. Here you may find webinars and useful content that will teach you a lot.

-    Explore relevant groups or events

There are specific events and groups where CEOs and business owners prefer to spend their time. Once you find such a group, you can copy the link to it and paste it to your automation tool that will scrape their profiles and send them messages that you've created on autopilot.

-        Try cold emailing. Much like with social media messages, the emails you send out also have to follow a certain formula to grab the future client’s attention. Mention why your business is unique, what exactly you do and how the services you provide will solve a problem of your target audience or how you’ve developed something innovative that would benefit the buyer.

LeadRocks is going to help you with finding relevant emails of people you'd like to reach out to. Just go to leadrocks.io and hit "try". Put "CEO" in the job title field and set other filtering criteria. Once the search is made, you can easily convert it into a CSV file and use it in your email campaigns.

-    Go Multichannel

I don't believe single-channel marketing is a go-to option. I think it doesn't meet current demands of the B2B players. Opt for multichannel marketing and find out which tool stack is going to help you run multichannel campaigns. I use Leadrocks, Closely and MailChimp. My primary channel is LinkedIn but I record all people who haven't replied and then reach them by email. For this purpose I use MailChimp.

-   Work on your LinkedIn Profile

If you're going to target business owners, it's better to tidy up things on your profile. Make sure your photo is professional. Work on headlines and on description. Expand your own network and be active in groups. Connect with thought leaders and learn new things continuously so you can catch up and engage in conversations.

-        Build connections at professional events.

Attending entrepreneurial events and building social relationships with the people there is a huge step towards the success of your business. Networking is unequivocally useful in the business world, as ‘getting out there’ and strengthening communications may pave your career: get job referrals, clients and sales partners that know and trust you. This is arguably your best bet to help your business grow and be seen.

-        Do your own research in finding partner companies willing to work with you.

These can be businesses selling different products to the same target audience as you.

-   Work on messages

Read the freshest updates about their companies, read articles they’ve written, industry news and their blog posts. This way, it will be easier for you to break the ice when starting your communication.

In conclusion

In order to sell and market your business idea, you have to ensure it has the qualities needed for it to stand out. It’s always best to establish meaningful connections with people in the field by networking and communicating with other professionals at events and meetings. Another great option is applying a well-developed cold outreach strategy and widening your circle of potential customers online via messages and emails.