Mining the Internet for Sales
Tuesday, July 1st, 200307/01/2003
EXERPTED FROM THE FORDYCE LETTER July 2003 review of BroadLook.
by Mark E. Berger
Whew!! I was beginning to get worried. Here I co-author a column on recruiting technology and technology really seemed to have bogged down. Nothing really new on the recruiting side. Some super passive candidate recruiting interfaces available but all are utilizing the same engines and strings. Some great ATS’s out there but not a lot more new they can put on the table. Was my job as columnist for The Fordyce Letter in jeopardy??? Not yet…thanks to the BroadLook System, business research tool in a class by itself.
Not too long ago researching a company on the internet meant taking a look at the website, checking FlipDog for present and past job ads, maybe even visiting Hoovers, the venerable business information website. This product takes researching an industry / company to a new level. One thing that strikes me as I use the software is that it assists you in following a structured methodology to obtain the desired results, much like following a passive candidate search methodology.
The BroadLook System starts with the Prospect Search, which pops up in it’s own window. Prospect Search searches for all the company websites that are related in some way to the industry/keywords you select. Let’s say you had a job order for an engineer, accountant or other professional requiring very specific industry related experience. You might review your clients website and pick up a few keywords here and from your order and use these keywords for the Prospect Search. Your first search can be fairly broad, using just a keyword or two, maybe a phrase…then, as in the previously mentioned recruiting methodologies, you use the results of the first pass to refine your search further. You might end up with 150 websites on your first pass but would want to get that down to a dozen or so before you analyzed the sites using the BroadLook engine.
I chose an industry, DVD copying, as I had some familiarity there and knew the niche marketplace. In my test case, I used a simple phrase as my search term and ended up with 55 sites in the queue. If I had wanted to increase the number of hits I could go back and edit the search plan, add additional criteria items, and re-run the search to increase the number of websites returned. 55, though, was plenty. Too many. So I spent a few minutes perusing the websites in BroadLooks own built in web browser and selecting criteria from websites I had no interest in…then “excluding” them from the search results. Ending up with 15, I examined these once more and specifically excluded 5 more sites to end up with 10 rock-solid competitors to my clients main line of business.
Once your Prospect Search is complete, you export those results to the main BroadLook engine. This search engine scans not only the home page but also the job/careers page if available, the WHOIS Internet database, performs a domain search, affiliation searches, searches print news, searches Internet newsgroups and provides results from Internet-based phone number lookups. Then, provides this information to you for each company in an easy-to-use, tabbed format.
In my case, I ran my DVD copying plan in the BroadLook engine and one by one it searched these companies websites for information I could use. On completion of the project I investigated the results of my target companies and found I had the names of several, sometimes numerous, company employees and their contact information, and in many cases, the company name and full address. Some results were more informative than others but I now have contact information from companies I had never even heard of before to start calling or emailing.
When you want some quick information on a specific company…use the Quick Search feature. Type in the company name and website address and get back a list of names, phone numbers and email addresses for many of the company employees.
The last part of the BroadLook system is the Trigger Events manager. Lets put it this way…What if you could put every company you ever placed with into BroadLook? Then, either weekly, bi-weekly or any time frame, you could track “Trigger Events” that happen within your client. Examples of trigger events: Expansion and Relocation, Financial changes, Strategic Relationships, Staffing Changes/Layoffs, New Product or Service and Press Releases. Instead of the monthly obligatory call to clients, checking on the status of hiring, you could contact your client when one of your Trigger events that signify a buying sign. This allows you to become more a consultant to your clients and less of a transactional supplier of services. When you call…you don’t have to ask “what is new?”, you already are aware, you are in-the-know. This is strategic prospecting. No one is more likely to write you a check then someone in your existing client base.
BroadLook exports to over 50 ATS (applicant tracking systems) and CRM’s including PC Recruiter, RESUMATE, BullHorn, Goldmine, ACT!, cBizOne, Gopher, COATS and many others as well as exporting to EXCEL or comma delimited files.
Anyone with a need to perform this type of research and analysis for their industry specialty or client or client competitors should take one of their demos. They provided an excellent training session prior to using the product, which was a group, Internet-based meeting. Although the product searches the Internet it is installed locally.
My contact for this article, Donato Diorio, is President & CEO of BroadLook and can be reached via voice at 262-754-8080 x211 or via email at ddiorio@broadlook.com. You can also visit the BroadLook website at www.BroadLook.com. Anyone interested can also hear an interview with Donato on Bill Vick’s www.xtremerecruiting.org website.
About BroadLook Technologies
BroadLook Technologies is a privately held company headquartered in Milwaukee , WI . BroadLook’s flagship product, the BroadLook Suite, is a powerful integrated application for harnessing the internet as a real-time data source for sales intelligence. The BroadLook Suite currently interfaces with over 50 CRM’s, applicant tracking systems and contact managers. BroadLook Technologies, Inc. can be reached at 262-754-8080.