B2B: How to Find the Owner of a Business
Business to Business (B2B) is big these days. In fact, forming personal connections with the local businesses in your area can lead to some advantageous opportunities. So, today I’m going to teach you how to find the owner of a business. First, let’s talk cover a few reasons you may want to look up the owner of a local business.
Reasons to Spend Locally
I’m big into shopping locally and using local services. For one, it helps build a strong local economy. A strong local economy provides better opportunities for your business to succeed.
One of the things I like to do at the beginning of every business class I teach is go around and have the participants introduce themselves and share a bit about their business? Why? Because it’s a great way to network with your local businesses. You never know when you might need the services/products of a fellow business person or when they’ll need yours.
In-person introductions are great, but you might not always have that opportunity. Or maybe you did have an in-person introduction but only remember a few details of the meeting.
Provide Feedback
Just about everyone could use a pat on the back or a leg up. If you receive superb service or have a bit of helpful feedback, you might have thought adding a personal touch, such as addressing it to the owner. Or perhaps you want to send a token of your appreciation.
Checkout the Competition
If you’re starting up a new business or want to glean some knowledge of how to do things better, investigating the competition can be highly beneficial. Sometimes the state’s business services releases some interesting facts about a business, such as the length time they’ve been open, their annual reports, and other items.
Request Permission to Use a Name
In one of my classes, someone asked me why you’d want to use a business name that’s already in use in your state. It was a good question, and I didn’t have a readily available answer. Lucky for me, someone else came up with a reason. If you’re doing business in another state and have established yourself, you might want to continue with the same name. If another business already has it, you may be out of luck. However, sometimes you can request permission and receive it to use the same name as another company, but with that company’s permission.
Collaboration
Yes, competition is competition. However, sometimes working together can increase the chances of success. For example, a vendor show doesn’t have quite the same effect if you’re a vendor show as one. Getting a list together of possible vendors that might work well in your vendor show can be advantageous to all who are involved.
Enough already, how to find those owners…
Become a Private Investigator
So, what do you do when you want to reconnect or make a first contact? Often times, finding the owner of a business isn’t so difficult at all. Typically the name of the business owner or registered agent is public information. Even better, most states have a business search engine.
Today, I am going to provide you with my not-so-secret directory of state business search engines. Keep in mind, websites change from time to time. So, if you find any links that don’t work, please notify me so I can update them to the correct links.
View Directory
If you have any questions about how to look up a business owner, don’t hesitate to ask in the comments below.
What other reasons can you think of to look up the owner of a business?
Love how informative this article is. Very easy to read, not too many “fluff” words that doesn’t make sense, gets straight to the point. Love your idea of shopping locally, I would rather help parents pay their daughter through college than making a CEO even more rich! Will definitely recommend this article to anybody that is looking for this type of information.
With the ability to find great deals while on the go, small businesses may face a difficult time competing. However, I read a few weeks ago that many people still have a distrust of shopping online. They’ll do their investigation online about a particular product, but then go into the actual store to make a purchase. Knowing how to find the owner of a business may present opportunities to buyers who are doing competitive shopping. They can contact those local business owners and ask for a price match before even going into the store.
Yeah I feel like using the same name as another established company is always sticky. I have a fitness blog and it has as similar name as one of the big giants out there in fitness and I was hesitant at first, but proceeded forward and emailed them. They never got back to me but I haven’t had any problems and had the site for 2 years! Cool article, I learned a lot from it.
It’s interesting that domain names aren’t always governed the same way as business names. I called my secretary of state a few months ago asking if entrepreneurs in the state who operated online businesses needed to register their business name. The response from the state was along the lines that they didn’t get into to that. When asked for clarification, they responded again, they didn’t get into that and would not elaborate further.
My guess is they don’t have regulations to govern online businesses, so just stay out of it.