List Building for Proprietary (Non-Brokered) Search

Searcher Friends:

My brother (co-searcher) and I have been asked by fellow searchers how we built our initial list of companies and owners for our proprietary (non-brokered) search. We thought it would be helpful to share our list building resource with the broader community.

Ruben Leon of Spectrum Lists helps searchers (and others) create tailored lists of companies, owners and their contact info. You can customize your lists based on industry, geography and other criteria. Ruben is easy to work with, reasonably priced, and provides quality info (response rates to our outreach have been really strong). In fact, we've already been under IOI with a couple companies he sourced for us.

Here is Ruben's email: redacted Or use this link to schedule a call: http://info.spectrummailinglists.com/meetings/ruben

Ruben has agreed to give any searcher a $25 discount if you use the code “FIRSTORDER”.  *Full disclosure*: Ruben is giving us a small referral fee for any searcher who uses that code, but we are going to turn around and use all of that credit to purchase more lists from him. 

Here are a few tips based on our past experiences buying lists from Ruben:

1. Ruben uses SIC codes, but they can be a little messy. For example, you might not want "construction" businesses, but many owners misclassify their business, so your "dream" target might be misclassified in the construction SIC code. We've found the same problem happens searching via LinkedIn—in fact we wrote an IOI yesterday to a distribution business that was misclassified as construction. It’s worth the extra time and expense to search within some big sectors that don’t seem to fit your criteria.

2. Many of us are targeting the “B2B Services” industry. But there are a lot of sub-industries under B2B Services that we should have excluded during our first go-around with buying a list: architects, engineers, lawyers, CPAs, etc. After looking at sample lists from Ruben (he’ll give you a preview), you’ll have a good idea of what types of business to exclude. It might take you a few rounds of tailoring your list to perfect it, but it's worth the time.

3. A new search variable is "Years in Business", which is extremely valuable for those of us looking at very established businesses (e.g. in business for 10yrs+).

4. If you have interns, don't be afraid to order the cheaper "non-email" lists (lists of companies that fit your criteria, but without owner contact info). That's a great way to assign work to interns with a pre-established list of companies that meet your criteria, while saving some money.

Let us know if you have any questions.

Good luck!