If you have an element of sales prospecting and new lead generation involved in your sales position or your business then you have so many options open to you. There is no excuse for not being able identify a constant stream of new sales prospects. There is also no excuse for approaching people 'cold' and not doing some preparatory research before making contact. You have everything you need at your finger tips so please use them. I remember back to my first week in sales where I spent 7 days calling UK Corporate Headquarters of companies to get their company brochures and shareholder information. We used this to get competitive data, lists of key personnel and lists of branch offices. Today that information is available at the touch of a button. Zoominfo: Zoominfo is an online database of people on the web. It holds information on over 40 million people. According to zoominfo themselves: "How does ZoomInfo create its profiles: Our patented semantic search technology continually crawls the Business Web - the millions of company websites, news feeds and other online sources -- and extracts business information using natural language processing and extraction algorithms. ZoomInfo then automatically organizes the information into fresh, comprehensive, objective and easy-to-read profiles. And because our data is automatically generated using the world's most up-to-date source, the Internet, we deliver the freshest information available. ZoomInfo also allows users to edit existing profile information or to add new profiles. Information sources are clearly marked on each individual profile." Zoominfo operates on a subscription basis but you can generally get the first 2 months free to try it out. I think it is a fantastic resource for prospecting data. Jigsaw: Jigsaw is an online database of people that operates on a collaborative data sharing basis. Essentially what that means is that you can upload data on your business contacts in exchange for data uploaded by other sales and business people. There are also options available to subscribe to data. The plus side of this is the data is usually excellent and includes the email address and telephone number. The downside is there is a question of business ethics. Would your contacts be happy sharing their name and contact details with others? The choice is yours. Have a look and find out if you are listed. Insideview: Insideview is a competitive intelligence service that integrates with key CRM systems such as salesforce.com. It integrates with your contacts and pulls in a whole range of newsfeeds, twitter posts, blog mentions, and even linkedin information directly into your corporate CRM system. When you are contacting people you will always have the latest information to hand. Take your sales prospecting to the next level by using multiple sources to find highly targeted sales prospects.

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