Using Google Alerts as a Sales Prospecting Tool

As some of you know, I'm the highly introverted (INFP) who is also a sales and marketing director for a company that sells both nationally and internationally.

So, this tells us that I really, really, really dislike sales prospecting -- at least in the stereotypical 'pick up the phone and cold call' 'sales hunter' way. I'm always looking for ways to find prospects in unorthodox ways.

One of these is spelled out in my article "Cold Calling for Introverts" (http://halwarfield.com/articles/cold-calling-for-introverts/) where I detail a means of using the phone that won't cause an introvert to want to lie down and die.

I found another one yesterday -- it's called Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) and, as with most Google tools, it's simple to understand and use.

In a nutshell ("look, I'm in a nutshell!"), you add some relevant search terms, tell it how often you'd want to be alerted and enter your email address. Poof! A Google-formatted email appears in your inbox full of relevant goodness!

Now, you may be saying, "Thank God Almighty! I see the light!" and others may be saying "So?".

Let's give some examples. Let's say you work in state and local government sales in water purification. You depend on RFPs (Requests for Proposals) so in the Google Alert box enter government, RFP, water, purification_ -- from that moment you will receive everything Google finds that references those terms.

Or if you sell large equipment to transportation companies, create an alert with the words heavy, equipment, fortune 500 or whatever makes sense to you.

Be careful not to fill the alert with too many words or you may miss opportunities because you've been overly specific. Keep it general -- it may be better to create more than one alert that covers different aspects of your field and customers.

Now you may get immediate gratification and you may not -- but it's a lot quicker and easier than hunting for these manually. Let me know how this works for you by commenting or send me an email at hal@halwarfield.com.

Hal Warfield is a speaker, teacher and coach. Contact him at hal@halwarfield.com. Or read other self-development articles at www.halwarfield.com under the “articles” tab.