How to cold-email someone who may or may not own the company?

by a searcher from Harvard University

3 years ago

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###-###-#### 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
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14 comments

searcher from INSEAD

I use B when on the phone. It works well, shows discretion & immediately sets the stage for the rest of the conversation which is about selling.

3 weeks ago | like reply | 0 likes

searcher from University at Albany, State University of New York - School of Business

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

3 years ago | like reply | 0 likes

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