Use SlideShare as a prospecting tool to find decision makers for your sales and marketing efforts.

1. HotProspect.com
398 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
hello@hotprospect.com
The Electric Slide: Using SlideShare to find
decision makers
In this post I’m going to cover some of the techniques I’ve used to harness the
amazing sales intelligence that is wrapped up in SlideShare’s presentation index.
In case you’re unfamiliar, SlideShare is a place where presentations are
uploaded and digitized, making all content on these slides searchable via
SlideShare’s site. It’s the YouTube of PowerPoint presentations, if you will.
But, what can you learn from a presentation hosted on SlideShare?
1. Contact information. Important people, likely including decision makers at
some of your target prospect companies, like to give presentations. It’s
commonplace for a presenter to include their social media handles and/or
email address somewhere in their presentation. This is usually on the first
or last slide of the deck.
2. Context about the contact and the company. A presenter often gives a
brief overview of their company and their own professional
background. This information can be really useful in helping you craft a
custom pitch for this contact.
3. Common ground. I am a big believer in finding common ground with a
prospect as a way to start building your credibility. Making an intelligent
comment about a presentation that the prospect may have given in the
past is potentially a great way to cut through the cold email noise.
There are three types of searches that I’ve had success using on SlideShare:
1. Company name. This will help you find presentations that are either by, or
about, the company you are targeting. Often, this will help you find
context and contacts.
2. Contact name. If a contact you are targeting is mentioned in a
presentation and/or has an account on SlideShare then they will show up
in the search results.
3. Industry or role. You may not have a specific company or contact in
mind. That’s OK! Try searching for an industry or a target buyer role (i.e.
VP of Marketing, CTO) to find prospects that meet your criteria.

2. HotProspect.com
398 Fifth Street, San Francisco, CA 94105
hello@hotprospect.com
What if you can’t find the specific contact you are looking for? Not every CEO or
company executive is on the conference presentation circuit, after all. Try
searching for folks in community management or evangelist type roles at your
target organization. While these folks may not be your target buyer, they are
often a great way to get an internal referral. These folks typically give lots of
presentations and are often very accessible.
As with any prospecting technique, results will likely vary based on the types of
companies and industries that you target. Give SlideShare a shot and see if it is
a valuable addition to your prospecting tool kit.
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