How To Cold-Email Someone Who May Or May Not Own The Company?

HOW TO COLD-EMAIL SOMEONE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT OWN THE COMPANY?

I've started building a pipeline of companies to cold-call/cold-email and realized quickly how difficult it is to confirm that a person is truly the owner of a company. E..g. maybe the closest I can find by google sleuthing is the "president" - this could be the owner, but not guaranteed. Or, I found a company where LinkedIn lists an individual as "VP of Engineering" .... but they've been around since[redacted]the year the company was founded) and a scraping site site lists them as President.

In such cases do you:
a) just assume you are emailing the owner and assume they'll ignore if not
b) start off by asking "are you the right person to talk to? if not, who is?" (could be awkward if they aren't the right person?)
c) dig deeper than I've been able to dig to get the right person's info

Related: if you can only find a public contact phone # or email address that likely goes to customer service or sales... do you just ask "can I be connected to the owner?"

2 likes 227 views 13 comments

searcher Simon Fraser University - 02/04/2021

You probably know this, but it's generally considered a no-no to talk to employees at a company and mention you're looking to buy it. When you do call I would keep things very vague until you've confirmed they are the owner. IE investment firm or just that you're interested in the industry and wanted to talk to someone in it, etc.

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searcher Harvard University - Harvard Business School Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute - 02/04/2021

I use a and assumed they are the right person. They are the right person 90% of the time or more. (the 90% would have been lost otherwise) It has been wrong sometimes and I am sure I have been ignored sometimes because it is wrong. I do not use public email like [redacted] If I have an owners name and no email I will test common combinations of the [redacted] and if it is a valid email use that.

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searcher Harvard University - 02/05/2021

Ahh great tip on guessing their email that way. And good to hear that your hit rate on guessing the owner is so high.

I agree that I definitely wouldn’t call a public number and say that I want to talk to the owner about buying!

searcher HEC Montréal Queen's University Peking University - 02/05/2021

On the email search side, https://hunter.io/ has been great to quickly identify email structure.

searcher University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business - 02/05/2021

SOS business search

searcher Harvard University - Harvard Business School Stanford University - 02/05/2021

Run into this all the time and I typically go with A -- its very rare that if I can't find the right contact in 20 minutes I'll find it in an hour. Outside of the President/CEO when their emails can't be found. 've also found it natural to email the CFO who typically is plugged into conversation regarding M&A as part of their work

Great tip on CFO emailing, thanks!

searcher Harvard University - Harvard Business School Northeastern University - 02/05/2021

In the absence of a better email, I'm inclined to email whoever I can find or even the info@ or sales@ emails. I've found that lower level employees sometimes do kind of know if the owner is thinking about retiring and will fwd it on. In the case of generic email inboxes, sometimes owners watch these closely since its the same address that orders come in through. Although, it's super tough to craft an email without a name so these tend to be informational with a correspondingly low response rate.

professional Concordia College, Moorhead - 02/05/2021

Consistent with Hiram's comment, the SOS search is one I frequently use for similar purposes

intermediary Naval Postgraduate School Concordia College, Moorhead - 02/05/2021

I live in Florida, and our Department of State has a website (Sunbiz.org) where you can look up businesses and see the officers of the company along with a mailing address. Might be worth while looking into whether or not your state has something similar.

searcher Harvard University - Harvard Business School Lehigh Univervsity - 02/09/2021

I go with A. I have also a different email template that I use when I am truly not sure whether the person is the owner, that is much more vague and designed just to get the foot in the door.

In general, if the company seems really attractive/great fit with what I am looking for, I tend to be a bit vague in my email communication so as to be able to back pedal if it turns out that the person is not the owner (I have several times ended up connecting with a hired CEO who would be the person I'd be directly replacing, so high conflict of interest there on their behalf in helping connect with owner). However, I am in a different country so some tactics might work differently than in the US.

searcher University at Albany, State University of New York - School of Business - 03/22/2021

I've made the "mistake" several times in 2020 and early this year. Some even came after extensive research only to find it just wasn't current info.
a/b I assume I am going to make a new acquaintance in every phone cal/e,mail Partially so I do not have to ask "if this is the right person," they tend to volunteer it If I am not the "pushy sales person."

c. Research has gotten me far but is imperfect. So I just pick up the phone, and also with email I try and make my intentions mostly clear but am really just trying to create a reply or something I can follow up on a call and mention

HOW TO COLD-EMAIL SOMEONE WHO MAY OR MAY NOT OWN THE COMPANY?

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