How well do you know prospective new clients before you progress an enquiry with them? To many companies this is a question that leaves them a little perplexed.
The internet houses a mass of resources that allows you to find out a huge amount of information out your clients, their market, their customers and their stability – before you bring them onboard.
The Googlemeister
Okay, so you Google them. Everyone does it. However, do you Google them to the point of Googling their domain name in e-mail format?
Such as ‘@domainname.com’ – you should do. If they’ve got employees that have posted on forums without hiding their mail address, you’ll be amazed how much you can discover about them.
If you manage to get a search result that reveals a username on a forum or website – Google that too and you’ll probably find they’ve used the same name elsewhere – even more information!
Google their address independently of anything else. If you see another name pop up under the address, how long have they been there?
Use Google Maps for their address too. Zoom in – is that a residential property and not the office you thought it might be? If they’re in a Google Street Maps area then it’s even better – because you’ll know exactly what the front of their premises look like when you’re struggling to find them for that first meeting.
Google the telephone number. On it’s own. You’ll be amazed how much more information that can drum up! Don’t forget the fax number.
If their website mentions their clients – Google a few of those too. You might find references back to the prospective customer.
Clients who manufacture a product with a specific name are easy to research – Google the product. This can sometimes lead to product reviews that give you an insight into their customer feedback – never a bad thing to be aware of.
If you’re in the UK – use Companies House WebCheck service to find out if their accounts are up to date, or if there is a ‘Proposal to Strike off’. If you click on ‘Order information about this company’ you’ll find that any formal request for a change in the company detail is given to in summary form.
Search for them on social networking sites – Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, Mixx and the list goes on.
Other resources
Have you used a WHOIS service to check out their domain name? Sounds easy – but not for the purposes of finding out about their domain.
You can use it to research who the Admin contact is if you’ve not got an internal contact already – and you’ll find an e-mail address there too. Sometimes it’ll be a third party registrant, but more often than not you’ll get an internal name. We use DomainTools.com
Visit the website of your regional newspaper – use their internal search facility to find the company or its owners. Some of their content may not be indexable by Google and it always pays off to double check.
Ultimately, you have a wealth of information at your fingertips – and if you start to use it you’ll get a competitive advantage without leaving your chair.
Well we’re big fans of a particular quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin:
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”
All of these tips work and you can usually be assured of at least 2 or 3 of them returning results on even the most disguised or hidden of companies.
You could request formal accounts to get a financial summary of the client, but it’ll cost you and it probably won’t yield anything like the information you can get from the monster that is the web.
In the past we’ve avoided problems, found hidden gems of clients, discovered major USP’s that clients didn’t even know they had and also identified faults with competitor companies that new clients were desperate to know how we’d found out!
You can apply this logic to any business, not just web design. If you’re not going to put the effort into finding out more than your rivals do, then you can expect to start behind them and be recovering your position throughout the sales process.
Furthermore, why don’t your clients deserve this doing? Of course they do! Clients part with their hard earned cash and the least you can do is offer them a service and level of attention that makes them feel as if you value them.
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