Solved: How do I scrape/extract a Prospect List (Non-Techies)
Note: Part of the Series: “Building your Prospects Lists (Targets/Leads)”
In this section I will show you:
- Why understanding how scraping works will separate you from the “ordinary”.
- Tools that you can use if you a little more technical.
- I’ll show you a non technical option that I use all the time.
- Two other options for building your Prospect Lists that the TOP Sales Teams use to keep their Pipelines Full.
#1 Don’t be ordinary!
Scraping or Extracting a list is a more advanced option and very few companies take advantage of it because the get scared of the technical stuff.
Forget that right now! (Non Techies: I’ll show you a non technical option shortly)
Q: What does Scraping data give you that Buying a List doesn’t?
Sometimes you find a website that contains a list of the “types” of prospects you are looking for and you wish you could “right click” download to excel.
Example: Lets say you selling a Gym Management Tool BUT you are focused on gyms that specialize in Cross-Fit.
Option 1: You could go to your list provider tool and see IF they have a list of Gyms specializing in Cross-Fit however they have them listed under the “Wellness” Industry category along with every other kind of Gym. Do you really want to go through the whole list trying to work out who does Cross-Fit?
Option 2: You find a website that lists all the Cross-Fit speciality gyms in the city that you are starting to sell into. You then either use one of the tools/methods below to extract the list:
Important: Keep in mind that you NOT trying to extract “All the things” but you looking for your prospects Web Address (This is important and you will see later why). If they offer up a senior contact person then AWESOME but thats rare.
The Website: A website that lists 1000’s of Cross-Fit gyms [In case you selling to Cross-Fit gyms ;) ]
#2 Tools you can use to extract the data for you:
Please keep in mind that using these tools will require you being comfortable with messing a round with some html/css IF you don’t get the right results the first time. (Try it and if it gets scary see the next option)
One of the most Popular Self Serve Tools (Personally used it — easy to start but can get technical to fine tune)
Has been recommended to me
A really good product used by larger businesses (More expensive):
TIP: Good old, Select All -> copy and paste works often just as well -> Paste it into a spreadsheet and sometimes its just that simple.
#3 A NON-TECHNICAL option I use all the time (NO CODE)
A lot of people don’t realize how “cheap” it is to get another company or someone to get the list for you (Under $100). So if you don’t know how to use the tools above or write some code to extract the data for you then here some alternative options that would be really cheap to get the data neatly prepared for you
Hire a freelancer on Upwork to do it (TIP: make sure THEY using tools so you dont pay per hour to get someone to manually copy paste. Most simple sites should take less than a couple hours to extract from)
Hire a company to do it (Canadian)
Another Option for a company you can hire (Little more than $100)
Summary: Scraping
Just because its technical sometimes DO NOT IGNORE IT! A good list on a website could give you way more value than buying a generic list from a list provider.
