Sales professionals understand the value of connecting with minority-owned companies. They not only represent a diverse segment but also provide unique opportunities for collaboration.
If you’re looking for partnerships with these businesses, Crunchbase is your go-to resource.
Crunchbase is like a business directory that provides you with tons of information about startups and established companies. It’s also a great prospecting tool to help you find the right leads within your territory.
In this tutorial, we’ll explore how to use tools like Instant Data Scraper and Clay to extract data from Crunchbase and enrich them to connect with decision makers.
By the end, you should be able to expand your lead database with contacts from minority-owned companies. You should get similar results as shown below:
Steps to Find Minority-Owned Companies From Crunchbase
1) Setting Up Instant Data Scraper
In this guide, we'll use Instant Data Scraper to extract data from Crunchbase.
Just visit the Chrome Web Store, type in 'Instant Data Scraper', and select 'Add to Chrome' to install the extension.
2) Finding the Target Companies from Crunchbase
First, let’s go to Crunchbase and sign in. On your dashboard, select 'Companies' from the main menu. This will display a list of companies in their database.
To narrow down to minority-owned companies, look to the left sidebar and find the 'Diversity Spotlight' option. Click on it and choose the minority group you want to focus on.
For our purposes, we'll choose 'Black / African American Led'. This action will refresh the list to show companies owned by this specific group.
3) Extracting the Data
To extract the data, click on the Instant Data Scraper icon located on your toolbar.
A pop-up window will appear. Here, set the minimum delay to 1 second and the maximum to 20 seconds. Remember that these delays are important. They ensure ethical scraping practices and reduce the risk of your IP being flagged or rate-limited.
Another thing to keep in mind. Most modern websites load content dynamically as you scroll. This is called ‘infinite scrolling.’ Therefore, you need to enable the scraper’s 'Infinite Scroll' option to ensure that you won’t miss out on any data.
With your settings in place, click on 'Start crawling'.
Once the process completes, you can download your data in a CSV format.
4) Importing Your List On Clay
Go to your Clay account and add a new table. Select an option that best describes your list. In this example, we’re going to select ‘Companies.’ Then, click ‘Browse’ to upload the CSV file.
Continue by adding your data to a blank table.
Once uploaded, your dashboard will show the minority companies scraped from Crunchbase. At this point, you can delete any irrelevant information and rename your column headers.
5) Finding the Decision Makers
Let’s add a new enrichment by clicking the plus (+) symbol on your table.
When the window pops up, choose 'Find Contacts at Company.'
Now, add the company's LinkedIn page as input to the 'Company Identifier' field.
To find the decision makers, we’ll need to enter a few keywords that describe their job titles. I’ve come up with a few ones below and entered them into the ‘Job Title Keywords’ field (make sure they’re comma-separated):
- Chief Human Resources Officer
- Chief Operating Officer
- Chief Executive Officer
- Founder
- Co-founder
If you can’t find a lot of results, feel free to add more keywords like Human Resources Director, Talent Acquisition Director, HR Business Partner, President, etc.
Click continue to add fields. Then, select the data you want to add as columns to your table. Here, I’ve chosen the name, title, and LinkedIn URL.
Once it’s finished, your table should be filled with the results. Note that you might not get all the relevant information about your target companies due to limited data sources or privacy restrictions.
Tip: Often, you might find more than one profile for each company. The enrichment tool would usually display the first result.
If you want to extract all the profiles, you can map them to a separate table. You can also add them to your current table by clicking a row containing the profiles. Select one of the results and hover your mouse over the data you want to add. Then, click ‘ Add as column.’
6) Finding the Work Emails With the Waterfall Method
Let's get those all-important work emails.
Start by adding another enrichment to your table. In the pop-up, go to the 'Waterfall' tab and click 'Work Email.'
A new pop-up will display all the options available to find your lead’s email address.
In this guide, we’re going to keep the default email providers which are Clay Enrichments, Datagma, and Hunter. Add the contact’s name, company name, and website URL as inputs.
Then, choose Debounce to validate all the emails.
Once you’re set, save the settings and run the integration.
On your table, you should now see the work emails of decision makers from your target companies.
What’s Next?
You've got the tools and the basic skills. Now, it's time to make the move!
Reaching out to decision-makers is your next step.
But here’s a challenge. Decision makers are always flooded with cold emails. Unfortunately, many of them go unread.
Your cold email needs to stand out. If you need some guidance, check out our other Clay tutorials for more tips:
- How to Find Company Key Decision Makers for Cold Emails Using Clay
- Customize Email First Lines Based on LinkedIn Posts With Clay
- Add Personalized City/ Location Images in Emails With Clay
If you found this useful, feel free to share or let us know in the comments. Happy prospecting!
