1.
HOW STARTUPS GET INTEL ON NEW
LEADS
drift.com

2.
WHEN IT COMES TO GROWING A STARTUP
That’s your startup growing, btw.
drift.com

3.
NEW LEADS AND SIGNUPS ARE YOUR GOLD COINS
drift.com

4.
SURE. A NEW LEAD COULD BE NOTHING. . .
bob@gmail.com
alice@hotmail.com
tom@dontcallme.com
drift.com

5.
SURE. A NEW SIGNUP COULD BE NOTHING. . .
bob@gmail.com
alice@hotmail.com
tom@dontcallme.com
Probably not good leads.
drift.com

6.
OR, IT COULD BE YOUR NEXT BIG
CUSTOMER, KEY PARTNER, OR INVESTOR
drift.com
futurecustomer@bigcompany.com
keypartner@co-marketing.com
investor@icanfundyourbiz.com

7.
OR, IT COULD BE YOUR NEXT BIG
CUSTOMER, KEY PARTNER, OR INVESTOR
drift.com
futurecustomer@bigcompany.com
keypartner@co-marketing.com
investor@icanfundyourbiz.com
Probably good leads.

8.
BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW FOR SURE?
drift.com

9.
YOU HAVE TO DO LEAD RESEARCH
drift.com

10.
AND THAT JUST “SOUNDS LIKE IT
TAKES A LOT OF TIME
drift.com

11.
SO WE ASKED 22 SALES AND MARKETING PROS
TO TELL US
drift.com

12.
drift.com
WHAT HAPPENS AFTER YOU GET A
NEW LEAD?

13.
AND FROM SIMPLE TO COMPLEX,
THIS IS WHAT THEY HAD TO SAY
drift.com

14.
PS. Join 350 startups who use Drift Daily to automate
their lead research for free.
Click Here To Learn More
Get a daily email and Slack alerts with names,
faces and context of your site's new signups.

15.
EVERETT HILL
“I believe in the old adage ‘companies don't buy, people do.’
That's why my first step in qualifying a lead is to research the
person on LinkedIn. Only then do I look the company up on
InsideView. It's rare that these two sources don't get me what
I need. Google is a last resort because it's less efficient. If the
lead scores well in that research, I reach out within a few
hours of receiving the lead. Striking while the iron is hot has
become the norm. It's effective as long as your approach is
about them and not about you.”
Revenue Growth Expert
Catalytic Advisors
@EverettHill1
drift.com

16.
SEAN PATRICK SI
“I'm a startup founder and I'm still doing all the sales in my team (I
have 20 people working in house for my company). When I get a new
lead, the first thing we do is to go to their website URL (they give it to
us in the contact form). We do a brief analysis and we send them a
proposal from their site. Websites says a lot about the company and
the person running the show. If the website is well-made, it's most
probably run by a well-to-do founder who cares about their digital
identity. If it's not, we usually don't bother reaching out. We want to
work with people who care about their online presence.”Co-Founder and CEO
SEO Hacker and Qeryz
@Qeryz
drift.com

17.
BUBBA PAGE
“Immediate follow up is necessary - if you respond to a lead one hour
after it is submitted, the response rate decreases 21x. We use
Rapportive or HubSpot Insights or LinkedIn directly - a quick lookup
can give you enough information to reach out and have a successful
call. A Google search also brings in relevant news articles or published
content that the person has been involved with. (There’s) absolutely
no reason to wait. If they filled out a form, they are either on their
phone looking you up on mobile, or on their computer, which is next
to a phone. If you even wait five minutes, it could cause them to get
sucked into a meeting or leave their office for something that will
distract them from your call.”
Founder and CEO
OUTRO
@BubbaPage
drift.com

18.
CHRIS POST
“When a new lead comes in our sales team does what we call
"5-minute RECON" where we try and find all we can about
them and their company utilizing everything from our CRM
and LinkedIn to just Googling them and seeing what we can
dig up. If its a website client we might run a builtwith.com
report on their site to see what technologies and frameworks
they are using. If its a marketing client we might research a
few keywords and see how they are performing for them. Its
little bits of intelligence like this that can help you essential
"pre-quality" a lead before you pick up the phone.”
President and Founder
Post Modern Marketing
@thisispost
drift.com

19.
NICHOLE ELIZABETH DEMERE
“I check their Twitter account and then their
website. ”
SaaS Consultant & Customer
Success Evangelist
@NikkiElizDemere
KENNETH SLIFER
Director, Product Marketing
Verge Solutions, LLC
@kdslifer
• LinkedIn (learn history, view common connections)
• Company Information Online and Internal
• Search Internal User Database To See If Transition
From One Organization To Another
drift.com

20.
NATALIE KAMINSKI
“We are getting ready to launch our app and have a
sign-up on our site. Whenever a new person signs up,
we send them a thank you email, and then I look them
up on LinkedIn and Facebook to see who they are (a
potential customer, partner, or investor), then I record
the information in our database so that I could reach
out to them with an appropriate message once our app
is ready.”
Co-Founder
GoBaby
@gobabyco
drift.com

21.
ALI DINANI
“CareGuide operates in an environment where a
lead is only viable for a short period of time. Our
research is mostly an automated process of
identifying their name, contact info, vertical, and
specific need and identifying the appropriate time
to contact.”Growth Engineer
CareGuide
@alidinani
drift.com

22.
CANDICE GALEK
“We gather most of our leads (email signups) via
the SumoMe app. We have been averaging a 5
percent conversion rate from this amazing pop up
and roughly 200 new leads a day. After we get
their contact info it is automatically pulled into our
GetResponse campaign. And depending on what
popup they clicked on we wait a day and then send
them a customized message.”
CEO and Founder
Bikini Luxe
@bikiniluxe
drift.com

23.
MARK ESPINOLA
“We have our contact page integrated directly with our
CRM. As soon as a request is submitted, it is followed
up on immediately via email and a call. It’s easiest to
use Google on the email address to find a hit. It’s
helpful if your contact information has enough
demographic information to follow up too. Of course,
there’s a huge tradeoff with demographics and
conversions as they’re inversely correlated. The more
you ask to fill out the less likely someone will submit, so
be careful.”
CEO and Founder
GradeHub
@mespi
drift.com

24.
PHOEBE FARBER
“When someone fills out a form our website they go throw a workflow
in HubSpot to determine if they're an MQL (with the exception of
requests, which automatically MQL). It looks at what information they
gave us, namely are they a B2B company and what status they're in -
are they new/unengaged or being worked already? We have ZoomInfo,
Datanyze and LinkedIn Sales Navigator to lend data assistance if
needed.”
Sales & Marketing Operations Manager
Attend
@PhoebeFarber
drift.com

25.
ANDRE OENTORO
“I use Rapportive and find the lead's name/
email and who we mutually know.”
Owner
Bread and Beyond
@BreadnBeyond
SACHIN AGARWAL
Founder
Braid
@sachinag
“First thing I do is look them up on LinkedIn. We want
the right mix of people in our early adopter set so that
we're getting feedback from people in our exact target
markets. The more precise the feedback, the better
product decisions we can make.”
drift.com

26.
HENRY BUTLER
"As a startup company that targets private investors
and developers of infrastructure projects as our
customer base, we utilize LinkedIn for much of our
lead generation. When new customers sign up to use
our platform, we check the person's LinkedIn account
to make sure they are a strong fit. In the end, we
need to make sure we are connecting the right
people."
Investor Relations Manager
CAAAPITAL
drift.com

27.
JD HAMBY
“ I use a variety of different strategies including cold
emails and calls. LinkedIn is a very useful tool for
myself as I can get an idea about person I'm trying to
contact beforehand. Also I spend a lot of time on
Google finding our potential clients websites and
reading customer reviews (i.e. Yelp, etc.) to see if
there is a pain they are dealing with where that we
can be a solution.”
Sales Specialist
Medicom
@MedicomHealth
drift.com

28.
JUNE JEWELL
“We use InfusionSoft and put new leads through a
campaign nurturing process. They get different
emails depending on what they do – download my
book, attend a webinar or view pages on our site.
We do use LinkedIn and their website to research
more about their company. We sometimes reach
out to them directly if they have attended more
than one event or seem really interested based on
all the tags in InfusionSoft.”
President
AEC Business Solutions
@JuneJewell
drift.com

29.
YVONNE LYNGAAS
“When a lead comes in from our website or is a referral we
conduct some initial background on the company via Google
and person via LinkedIn. All leads are followed up on within 20
minutes via phone. We gather budget, timeline, and decision
maker information prior to putting together a proposal that
helps us score the lead and schedule a proposal. Our response
time has been our greatest asset.”President
Monarch & Company
@monarchandco
drift.com

30.
CURTIS BOYD
“Our streamlined client acquisition protocol has been a huge
part of our success. When we get a new lead capture, we get
an appointment for a free demo, free trial, free consultation.
You name the CTA and we use it on different landing pages on
different advertising mediums. During the demo we have a
nice presentation that we developed using Pitch Deck. Before
we even meet with them, we do our due diligence about the
company to make sure they are qualified. We have a
systematic list that we go through, to score them as potential
clients based on compatibility. It helps personalize the
experience as well for the client, and helps our sales team
prioritize sales leads.”
CEO
Future Solutions Media
@Fut_Solutions
drift.com

31.
AMOL WAGH
“We generate regular leads, who are direct opportunities for
our clients to pitch their services, courses or send product
quotations. We do a quick background research of a particular
person or company, using website or social media profiles,
mostly LinkedIn and Twitter. We forward that information to
our client using our lead manager feedback. And from that
info, the client or their representative directly contact the
lead, but they have advantage in pitching them considering
they know the background. Mostly we reach out a day after a
lead is generated in most cases.”
Co-Founder
DOTLINE INC
@amolwagh
drift.com

32.
ROB BOIRUN
“In my business I have clients contacting me for various reasons, and because
of this I have multiple sign up processes in place. One may be interested in a
brand new website, so after someone signs up for information they first get a
non salesy message from us with addresses their concerns as well as offering
that we are the right solution. Or if someone is looking for advertising
signage we will usually follow up with a phone call or email within the next
hour. So really it depends on the situation. Regardless we always do some
basic research on Google and LinkedIn on the customer or business so that
we can be familiar with who they are or what they do. This always makes the
conversation easier since we can both be on the same page.”
CEO
PopNet Media
@RobBoirun
drift.com

33.
TOM BELHUMEUR
“I’m a co-founder and head of business development at an early stage AdTech
company so the way we handle leads is what works best for us at our current
stage. New site leads/sign-ups are routed to my inbox. As soon as it comes in
I do a quick Google search and read “just above the fold” on the company site
and check linked for individual role and responsibilities. I then respond with a
brief personal/template email thanking them for their interest, restate our
mission/goal, tell them I’d love to learn more about their company(reference
something from “above the fold”) let them know they can reach out to me
personally, leave them with a question or call to answer — something specific
they can answer quickly and easily, yes/no, its not about the content I’m
looking for the response. If I can do this quick enough I’ll hopefully get an
answer and that’s my opportunity to open up the relationship. These first
steps won’t scale in the future, but our volume of inbound leads isn’t
overwhelming at this point either which also lends itself to more “interested”
leads.”
Co-Founder
Libring
@LibringEdge
drift.com

34.
KATIE MCCABE
"When I get a new lead I follow up immediately
because in sales, time is of the essence. If you
aren't selling what you've got, someone else is.
When using email to follow up, I find that the
shorter and more to the point the email is, the
more likely the prospect will respond. After three -
four work days, it never hurts to follow up with a
simple email, asking ‘Any update on this?’ In sales,
persistence is key.”
Founder
Syreni Swimwear
www.syreni.com
drift.com

35.
Want to do lead research without any of the hassle?
Check out Drift Daily and automate your lead research for
free.
Click Here To Learn More
Get a daily email and Slack alerts with names,
faces and context of your site's new signups.

36.
QUESTIONS?
Email dg@drift.com
Learn more at drift.com