Recommendations on how to guide virtual assistant data mining

by a searcher from Indiana University, Bloomington/Indianapolis - Kelley School of Business

2 years ago

I'm brainstorming on what information I need to ask a virtual assistant to compile for helping to identify potential target companies.  I'm trying to balance between giving too broad guidance and asking for tactical information that isn't really value added at this point.  

Any recommendations on what information I need from a virtual assistant in order to initially reach out to the potential seller?

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searcher from Northwestern University - Kellogg School of Management

To Kel's point, there are a few different ways to utilize VA's in your outreach. You have to define their scope of work i.e. are you providing them a target list and asking them to source contact information? Or are you hoping to turn them loose on "plumbing companies in the southeast" hoping that they'll both source the companies and the respective contacts? The question is for you to determine, but also to Kel's point, it is probably beneficial to go through the process yourself first so that you know what to look for when you hire a VA. Buy a subscription to Dunn & Bradstreet, Zoominfo, or even just start with LinkedIn coupled with Phantombuster scrapers and see what you can dig up.

2 years ago | like reply | 0 likes

searcher from Harvard University - Harvard Business School

In general, you don't need that much info to reach out to a seller. Just the company & seller information, and some directional financial info. More important is solidifying your theses and deal criteria to meet them. Once you have this filter, you can have the VA screen potential companies, collect and standardize data, or even write the initial outreach script for you.

Have you reached out to target companies yourself yet? One approach might be to work the entire process 10 or 20 times yourself through seller contact to see the patterns of what is most easily outsourced.

2 years ago | like reply | 0 likes

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