The Jigsaw Solution
When you have been in an industry for 20 years you are pretty much one degree of separation from anybody that you need to meet. That is the genius of LinkedIn. With a couple of clicks and a phone call you can reach out to just about anybody of substance in your industry. I am not a power user and according to LinkedIn I have over 3M people in their network within 3 degrees of separation. The telecommunications industry was a natural fit and early adopted of social networking technology.
However, the problem I have run across is how to get contacts and introductions in a new and less connected industry. I believe I have solved this problem with Jigsaw. Jigsaw is an online directory of free, downloadable company and contact information containing more than 17 million contacts. The difference between Jigsaw and LinkedIn is that Jigsaw’s users are responsible for creating and updating the Jigsaw contact and company database. You can pay to access contacts or get credits by entering in business contact information. I just started building a sales plan for iSS and so far every company I am targeting is included in Jigsaw with at least a handful of contacts including the C-level mangers that are critical to reach in any sales process. I recommend giving them a try (especially in combination with LinkedIn) if like me you find yourself working in a new industry and needing to build a network quickly.