Leads-how and where to get them

You will get your leads from a marvelous website called www.manta.com.  It is free to use and will enable you to save hour after hour of research looking for leads.  You can search for retail credit card retail merchants by Location (large or small cities and towns ANYWHERE IN THE u.s.) or business Category.   You can also filter searches by Revenues (gross sales), number of employees and whether the business is a single location or a branch.

All listings have company name and phone number. Many have the owner's name, employee count, years in business etc. and other valuable information

Manta.com enables you to spend 95% of your time calling prospects instead of wasting time digging up business to call.

Before we begin the tour there are certain facts that you should know about leads basic procedures that we recommend that you follow.

1.  You are free to call anywhere in the United States.  We believe that most of your competitors will rush to the big cities to prospect.  You are free to do this.  The volume of prospects is there but the competition is very strong.  An example of giant metro areas are New York City, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, etc.                                                            

     We recommend that you also test calling smaller cities and towns such as Wilmington, Delaware, Harrisburg Pennsylvania, Cambridge Massachusetts or Des Moines Iowa...... or even smaller towns. There are plenty of storefronts to call on and the competition will not be as high.  Then you can work those areas which have the highest closing rate for you.

2. The three major Manta.com categories that you should work are:

        Restaurants and bars  (881,000 U.S. business)

        Shopping and stores (2,124,000 U.S. businesses)

        General automotive repair shops (188,000 U.S. businesses-NO new or used auto dealers or gas stations)

These 3 major categories of retail businesses total approximately 3.2 million U.S. companies.

What a huge market....... You may prefer to begin in your home state but you are free to call anywhere in the U.S.

Now we can begin the tour. Although it is not necessary, we suggest printing this page out and using it as a guide while you familiarize yourself with manta .com

        We begin our tour by going to Manta.com (figure 1)

Figure 1

Now we can search by either Category or Location (figure 2)

Figure  2

 Let's take a look at search by category or location (figure 2). Click on

Location.  You will find a list of all the states with the number of businesses

in each state (figure 3).  By now you should begin to see the power of

manta.com ...... and this is just the beginning.

     Next, we are going to search in Massachusetts. 

Figure 3

Click on Massachusetts (figure 3) above.

This shows the total businesses in Massachusetts (figure 4). 

We'll narrow our search further by looking for various cities

and towns in Massachusetts.  Click on Location

Figure  4

Now in figure 5 you are presented with a list of the top 10 cities in

Massachusetts by number of businesses.  At the bottom of figure 5

you will see a link to 100+ cities and towns in Massachusetts.

Figure 5

Click on the "see all cities for Massachusetts" link (figure 5) and get

the list shown in figure 6.

Figure  6

Now we'll go back to the top 10 Massachusetts cities and towns by

number of businesses (figure 7) and we'll click on Cambridge

Figure  7

Now we have Cambridge..... let's click on "Category" (figure 8)

Figure 8

You will get a list of many categories.  You are interested in one of these two

(figure 9). Let's start with Shopping and Stores.  You will click on it.

Figure 9

Now you are presented with another list of subcategories (figure 10).  You decide to call Jewelry stores.  You click on Jewelry stores.

Figure 10

Now you are looking at a list of 33 jewelry stores in Cambridge MA (figure 11)

Also note the left hand arrow at "company revenue." The area to the left of most

page enables you to filter out categories by Revenues, number of employees and

single or branch location.  These filters are very useful when you are working with large cities.

   Now lets click on the first listing .........  Daniel Spirer Jewelers

Figure 11

Just look at all the information (highlighted or indicated by arrows) in figure 12.  You really know something about the merchant before you make a call.  You have his screen opened when you make the call.

I could go on and on showing you around  manta.com but by now you should have the idea.  It is a huge time saver as a lead source.  

Figure 12