Learning so much more about Storage Hardware Companies
So, for the past couple weeks, I have been working on this project that I have taken an initiative on after conversatoin with one of the VP's here in my company. We're trying to determine existing/potential channel customers for our 2.5" hard drives.
I had no clue how to go about doing it. It's just that I wanted to take an initiative. So I told him, Yeah! I can do it. The next few days, I almost spent sleepless nights trying to figure out how would I go about getting the information that I am out to seek.
I tried all friends/family/contacts/cold-emailing. But the response wasn't great at all. I even went on LinkedIn and tried to get in touch with people who work for major IT hardware distribution companies. I got responses from a couple of them. However, since most information about customers is confidential, even they could not give me the information that I was looking for.
While I was doing all this research, I realised one thing. I said to myself that it is so much easier to get information out of people back in India. There you can so comfortably make use of your contacts, your contacts' contacts, so on and so forth. I was finding it that much difficult to approach people and ask them questions that I had.
While I was doing the research, I had been visiting a site called storagesearch.com. The site lists all possible companies (mostly in US) who have anything to do with storage. I cold-called one company. Talked to the customer representative. Just asked a few simple questions like - do you guys manufacture your own drives or you use other manufacturer's drive? I succeeded in 1 company.
I repeated the method. I have been calling atleast 5-6 storage companies in a day and talking to their representatives. So right now, I have a comprehensive list of a large number of companies that use our or competitor's hard drives.
Even though the stuff described above sounds interesting, let me tell you that cold calling companies and waiting forever for their customer/technical rep to become available is killing. I would rather be sleeping!!!
Nevertheless, it's a great learning experience and in the process I am learning so much more about so many storage companies that I would never have otherwise.
-saurabh
I had no clue how to go about doing it. It's just that I wanted to take an initiative. So I told him, Yeah! I can do it. The next few days, I almost spent sleepless nights trying to figure out how would I go about getting the information that I am out to seek.
I tried all friends/family/contacts/cold-emailing. But the response wasn't great at all. I even went on LinkedIn and tried to get in touch with people who work for major IT hardware distribution companies. I got responses from a couple of them. However, since most information about customers is confidential, even they could not give me the information that I was looking for.
While I was doing all this research, I realised one thing. I said to myself that it is so much easier to get information out of people back in India. There you can so comfortably make use of your contacts, your contacts' contacts, so on and so forth. I was finding it that much difficult to approach people and ask them questions that I had.
While I was doing the research, I had been visiting a site called storagesearch.com. The site lists all possible companies (mostly in US) who have anything to do with storage. I cold-called one company. Talked to the customer representative. Just asked a few simple questions like - do you guys manufacture your own drives or you use other manufacturer's drive? I succeeded in 1 company.
I repeated the method. I have been calling atleast 5-6 storage companies in a day and talking to their representatives. So right now, I have a comprehensive list of a large number of companies that use our or competitor's hard drives.
Even though the stuff described above sounds interesting, let me tell you that cold calling companies and waiting forever for their customer/technical rep to become available is killing. I would rather be sleeping!!!
Nevertheless, it's a great learning experience and in the process I am learning so much more about so many storage companies that I would never have otherwise.
-saurabh
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