Contact press release sources

Yet another sales lead generation strategy that I employ is to contact press release authors. In addition to technical articles, you should also feverishly track press releases of your competitors, customers, and prospects. Whenever something new hits the wire where your product/service could be used, shamelessly contact the source of the release. An opening phone statement could be something simple like this:

Hi Jane, I saw your press release announcing your expansion plans in Houston and was hoping to talk with you for three minutes about your networking needs. [don’t leave time for a response here] I promise that this won’t be a hard sales pitch and at any time during the discussion you are free to tell me that it doesn’t sound like a good fit and I won’t bother you again. Our widgets have been used in similar plants to increase network speed by 60% and I just want to see if we can offer you that same type of value.

This should buy you at least the initial three minutes – keep to that three minutes and ask for permission to talk longer if you need to.