Communicated Content – Whether you’re pursuing new leads for marketing or recruitment or looking to contact someone for business or personal reasons, your best chance of getting heard lies with a simple phone call. Emails from out of the blue often go unopened or end up languishing in someone’s spam box, while written correspondence can be time-consuming and unreliable. However, finding accurate contact details for businesses and individuals isn’t always straightforward.
So, we’re going to look over some of the most effective methods for locating a phone number online that won’t waste your time to help you connect with valuable new leads in minutes. Dedicated online tools are, quite simply, the most effective resources for generating contact details, but we’ll also look at some alternatives that might be worth considering.
How to Find a Phone Number Without Online Tools
As we’ve said, online tools offer excellent functionality that you won’t get with a basic search engine. However, there are other ways to find a number that might be successful for you, depending on the online visibility of the person you’re trying to contact. So, let’s explore these methods first.
Check a Business’ Website
If you know the name of the company where your prospect works, you can try visiting their website to see if their work phone number might be listed. The vast majority of commercial websites feature a “Contact Us” section where you may be able to find a contact number for your prospect’s department. However, many companies will simply list a general business number, so this method may not be sufficiently accurate.
Check Social Media
Social media is quickly becoming one of the most valuable tunnels for marketers and recruiters. Checking a site like LinkedIn might provide a contact number for your prospect if they’ve made a profile. Facebook is another platform where people sometimes feature their contact numbers, especially if their business has its own page. Although, due to privacy concerns, many people will choose to keep their contact information hidden.
Try Online Business Listings
If you’re looking to initiate contact with a B2B prospect, checking regional business listing sites might prove successful. Somewhere to start could be Google MyBusiness, where you’ll find a huge database of companies’ information. Again, this method has its limitations, but it can produce results.
Online Tools for Finding Phone Numbers
We’ve covered some informal methods that could help you find a prospect’s phone number. However, if you want to get accurate results quickly, online tools are the most effective solution available. There’s a wide variety of them, so let’s look at some of the best tools on the market that are proven to get results.
Whitepages
Whitepages is an online contact information directory that’s been around for some time. It’s got a following due to the large scope of its searches which help find contact information internationally. Whitepages really excels if you want to use it for personal reasons, such as finding an old schoolmate or colleague. It’s also useful when looking up companies or individuals in situations where you’re worried about the possibility of fraud being committed. However, its features don’t really favor recruiters, marketers, or anyone looking to contact prospects for B2B purposes, especially when compared to other options available.
SignalHire
If you want a professional online tool that gets results quickly and efficiently, SignalHire is an excellent choice. SignalHire works through a Chrome extension, which can reveal contact details on sites like LinkedIn simply by hovering the cursor over someone’s profile. SignalHire has a robust selection of search tools that go through over 200 million individual profiles on platforms like GitHub, Facebook, Twitter, and, of course, LinkedIn.
Usefully, SignalHire also offers search parameters in fields like previous employers and job skills, making it suitable for lead generation purposes as well as retrieving contact information. Boolean search terms are enabled; you can bulk search to return up to 1,000 results. Business and personal details are made available, and search results are all verified by third-party tools to ensure useful and accurate information is being provided. The premium version offers other powerful features, but you can take advantage of a free offering to try out the application for yourself. Overall, SignalHire is a versatile and effective solution that’s worth putting at the top of the list.
Truecaller
Unlike many of the online tools available, Truecaller takes the form of a smartphone app. Features include call blocking, caller ID, and call recording. To find a phone number info, enter it into the app, and details such as address and contact number will be returned, allowing you to call your contact with a couple of clicks. While the app is certainly innovative, you may find it a little limiting if it’s your primary channel for finding contact details since it’s not as easy to work with as some of the desktop tools, lacks integration, and may restrict your work rate. There’s a free trial available, but, unfortunately, most of the best features are locked behind the premium version.
AnyWho
Unlike the other dedicated online search tools we’ve looked at, AnyWho is an entirely free service, but it is limited to North American territories. AnyWho lets you reverse search contact information by phone number, and you can search through criteria like name, address, and ZIP code. For a completely free service, AnyWho is fairly impressive and could be useful for low volume prospect acquisition, as long as you’re based in the United States. However, it lacks the power functionality of other online search tools, so for professional purposes, AnyWho may prove lacking.
The Bottom Line
We’ve looked at several options for sourcing phone numbers. Ultimately, premium online tools like SignalHire offer the best search services, with lots of extra features that will prove useful in professional situations. If you’re not anticipating making a high volume of number searches on a regular basis, some of the free alternatives may prove adequate. In any case, many of these services have trial versions available that you can use for free, so it’s worth giving them a risk-free spin to see which option best suits your needs.
