Initiating b2b interactions can be a frustrating process. LinkedIn promises to make professional interaction as easy as it can be, but sometimes it is just not that simple. Not every company chooses to fill out their LinkedIn profile as thoroughly as they could and, more annoyingly, sometimes directors and their contact information are nowhere to be found. When this happens, here are 3 alternatives to LinkedIn for finding new, exciting b2b prospects.
Unless you are a journalist or media personality, Twitter is not often thought of as a place for business people to connect. However, let us say for example that you wanted to contact the Director of BrewDog, James Watt, about a service you’re sure he would be interested in. You look at LinkedIn for the director information, but there is no contact information given. The same thing happens on any other professional social media. Twitter gives you the power to interact directly with people without the need for their personal contact information via replying to and quoting an author’s tweets. Although not a perfect system, this can be incredibly useful in catching the attention of whoever you’re trying to contact.
Companies House
While trying to find a director, if you know that the director, you’re looking for is the director of a UK based company or has a branch registered in the UK, you can use the government service that is Companies House. On Companies House, you can search for the company by name that you want to do business with and find their directors’ names from there. Or, if you already know the name of the director you want to contact, you can find their appointment history and correspondence address directly from the website.
DataGardener
DataGardener is a massive database containing everything you could ever need to know about a company such as its financial status, shareholdings or charges. But for b2b contacts, the director search function is an innovative and invaluable tool. DataGardener provides an extensive library of not just UK directors and director information, but a dedicated function that allows users to see the relationships between directors of different companies, as well as their contact information. DataGardener provides director names, service addresses and even nationalities, making the process of b2b interaction more natural than ever.
Just because LinkedIn is one of the largest professional platforms does not mean that it’s the only way to make professional connections. It is always worth considering using alternatives, you can discover a much wider pool of possible contacts that may not be using one specific platform.
