In this article, we’ll explain how you can find contact information for the leadership in a company. We'll cover how to find CEO email addresses and phone numbers in the commercial real estate industry, as well as how to find key decision-makers in the CRE industry.
If you're considering purchasing an email list of CEO contacts in the CRE industry, read this first. There are better ways to find contact information for decision-makers, including grassroots searches online, and an innovative prospecting tool that's changing the way CRE companies connect with each other.
First, the basics.
Basic Ways to Search for CEOs
If you’re looking for the names, phone numbers, and email addresses of individuals in the C-suite of any organization, there are a number of grassroots ways to search:
Company websites: Visit the company’s website, look at their About Us, and find the names of their leadership (if it’s been published and updated).
Google: Do an internet search (Google, for example) for the company name + CEO, and if you’re lucky, you’ll find what you’re looking for on the first page of search results.
More Googling: Search for the CEO’s name + phone number or email and hope for results, which can be especially challenging if the person has a common name.
Social media: Search social media channels for the company and its leadership’s names.
Public records: If the company is a public company (listed on a U.S. stock exchange), you can try to find the information on the SEC’s EDGAR system, which is a vast database with more than 20 years of records from publicly traded companies.
These methods are free, and they can work, but they take time and patience. Expect to scroll through a lot of misleading information to find accurate contact info. The upside of using conventional search methods like this is that it costs nothing, other than your time, to conduct these searches.
That said, your time is valuable, isn’t it? There are better ways to find CEOs and other key decision-makers contact information in the commercial real estate industry.
Find a CEO in the Commercial Real Estate Industry
First, we’re going to explain how you can use Biscred to find CEOs in the commercial real estate industry. Then we will show you how to be strategic in your search to reach key personnel who influence decisions within an organization. Yes, the CEO (or COO, CIO, etc.) may have the final say, but there are a number of key personnel who influence his or her decisions.
Using Biscred to find CEOs in CRE
After logging into your account and navigating to the Person section of the database, filter by job title. In this example, we selected “CEO,” and then added columns for CEO email addresses and phone numbers. There were 28 people who met our criteria, which seems low because we used the abbreviation, CEO, rather than the spelled-out name. Turns out, most CEOs do not abbreviate their titles!
When we revised our search, we found over 2,000 individuals with the title “chief executive officer.” We did a third search, for just “chief,” and this is what we found:
Our search for “chief” gave 7,000 results with titles that included:
chief executive
chief investment officer
chief compliance officer
chief data officer
chief financial officer
chief operating officer
chief marketing officer
chief human resources officer
chief business officer
chief technology officer
chief procurement officer
Now, we can narrow our search further by filtering based on asset experience (retail, warehouse, mixed-use, etc.) and location — the details that really matter to the business developer or salesperson.
Is the CEO the Right Contact Person?
Naturally, when you’re selling goods or services or building a network for yourself or your business, you want to reach the “person at the top”. While reaching the decision-maker makes sense, you’re overlooking a lot of other influential people in the organization.
Especially in larger organizations, decision by committee is a real, albeit frustrating, process.
The quote, “If you ever want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it,” has been attributed to inventor Charles Kettering, and it’s relatable to anyone who’s worked in a larger organization.
Yes, you want to build relationships with decision-makers, such as those who comprise the C-suite. But, strategic business development professionals don’t “skip the line” and go straight for the big office on the top floor. They build relationships at all levels, starting with the people who actually use the goods or services they’re trying to sell. You want to find:
Influencers: End users who actually use the goods and services
Evaluators: Typically the managers or supervisors over influencers, who evaluate options and summarize them for decision-makers
Decision-Makers: People who approve purchases
How to do smart searches to find influencers and evaluators
Let’s say a salesperson at a technology company wanted to get in touch with one of the largest CRE companies in the world to demonstrate a web-based project management tool built especially for real estate development companies. Instead of reaching out to the company’s top executives, the salesperson used Biscred to identify all the people in their organization who hold the title “project manager.” With this information, he will be able to reach out to them with a customized email message and then follow up with a phone call.
Don’t Stop With the CEO
Powerful tools like Biscred are changing the way companies in commercial real estate do business with each other and find leads. In a related post, we explained how to find and contact property owners. But the best way to learn about Biscred is to try it for yourself.
Use this form to request a demo of the Biscred prospecting tool. One of our own business development staffers will reach out to you to schedule a time to walk through the tool, so you can see how it works.