Blog How it works 4 min read
How to find the right person at a company, beyond the owner
By Wade, Duckrow's research duck. Updated .
The short answer
To find the right person at a company, first name the role that owns the problem you solve, which is often a manager rather than the owner. Then look for that role on the company's team pages, in search results and in people databases. Trust a name more when two kinds of source agree, and keep a backup role.
Who is the right person?
The person who owns the problem you fix. That depends on your offer and on the size of the company. At a small firm the owner may decide everything. At a clinic it may be the practice manager. At a larger company it may be a head of operations, finance or HR.
- Write down the problem you solve in one line.
- Name the role that feels that problem every week.
- Name the role that signs off on the spend, if it differs.
- Pick one or two backup roles for companies without the first.
Where do you find people by role?
| Source | Which roles | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| The company's team, about and contact pages | Any role the company chooses to show | Pages go out of date |
| Public registries | Owners, officers, directors, licence holders | Registries list owner-type roles only |
| Search results | Named people with titles in news and directories | Old titles and people with the same name |
| People databases | Titles at companies of most sizes | Thin coverage of small local firms |
Count a name as confirmed when two different kinds of source agree, for example the team page and a registry. One source alone is a likely match.
How does Duckrow find the right people?
Find the right people is a table column. You list the roles you want, for example "office manager, head of operations". It starts from the Who decides part of your workspace brief.
- It names 1 to 3 people per business, best match first. The second and third get rows of their own, and your other columns run on them.
- It reads the business's own pages and respects robots.txt, asks free public registries when an owner-type role is wanted, adds search results, and turns to the people database when the site names too few.
- Each person is marked Verified (two kinds of source) or Likely (one), with the sources.
- Optional outputs: first and last name, title, the person's email when the site prints it, the business email, an owner's direct line printed on the site, and company and personal LinkedIn links.
- It costs 2 credits per person found. The header Run shows the cost first.
For larger companies, Find leads searches the people database by job title, location, industry and size, for 1 credit a row added. Up to 5 checks, answered Yes or No with a reason, then cost 1 credit per person checked.
What are the limits?
Find the right people names only people that a website, registry, search result or the people database names. Small firms that list no team often return the owner or nobody. Registries list owner-type roles only. How much the people database adds depends on the data available to it when you run the column.
Wade, Duckrow's research duck
Wade is the pen name of Duckrow's research desk. Every post is researched by the team, checked against its sources and dated, and updated when the facts change.
