Free Book Alert

If your business involves sales of any kind, the Internet is your best friend. You can now walk into an initial call armed with a remarkable amount of information on your prospect — industry trends, personnel moves, product lines, and more.

The Internet can be an even better friend if you know some tricks and shortcuts to get to the data you need. Sam Richter, President of the James J. Hill Reference Library in St. Paul, MN, makes his living helping people find this information. He’s working on a book called Take the Cold Out of Cold Calling — Web Search Secrets for The Inside Scoop on Companies, Industries and People.

Near as I can tell, the book hasn’t been published yet (Chris Lytle’s newsletter tipped me off to its existence without mentioning how to get it, and a search of Amazon, Powell’s and Barnes & Noble came up empty), but a little digging got me to a web site where you can download a working draft.

The site says that the draft contains about 50% of the tips that will be in the final version, so you’ll still have to reach into your wallet to get the whole thing when it’s done. But there’s a lot of really useful information in the draft.

For example, I’d never heard of Yahoo’s Site Explorer feature, which breaks up your target’s site into subdomains and lists any sites that link to it. Go to https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com, plug in a URL you want to research, and watch it go to work.

Free is a very good price for the draft version, and I’ll be shelling out for the real thing when it’s ready.

One note before you hit the “Print” button, though — it’s 127 pages. Go easy.

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One thought on “Free Book Alert

  1. Phil,

    Thanks so much for your kind words. I’ve been teaching the “Take the Cold” program for years now, and people have reported to me some exceptional results using information they’ve found online to make a great first impression and provide exceptional client value. I’m glad you found some fun tips.

    If your readers would like a couple of other free tools, they might want to check out http://www.jjhill.org/biztoolkit, http://www.bizinfolibrary.org, and http://www.virtualadvisoryboard.org

    All are meant to help people access information that they might not find via other means.

    Thanks again.