Tracking sales prospects and friends
Jinfo Blog

9th February 2009

By Penny Crossland

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Business information providers have always played a key role in supplying firms with comprehensive and timely company data. Businesses which have had to cut back on their marketing budgets in these straitened times are having to become more efficient in their sales prospecting, a fact that OneSource is keen to exploit with its new Advanced Radius Search technology (http://digbig.com/4yfrx). Incorporated into its Global Business Browser product, a GPS navigation system using precision latitude and longitude data can be used to find as many sales opportunities as possible in the area of a specific prospect, enabling more targeted marketing campaigns. OneSource users are also able to customise their searches by adding items such as revenues and SIC codes to their location data. A useful business tool at a time, when, according to the Association of Corporate Travel Executives business travel is being cut, (http://digbig.com/4yfst) and the need to maximise contacts made on sales trips is becoming ever more essential. The use of GPS technology in business information tools is not new and is likely to be offered by more company information providers in the future. As reported by Udo Hohlfeld a few months ago (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e12761), Hoover’s beta MobileSP service has a GPS custom location feature. The other side of the GPS coin was presented by a new Google feature last week. Google Latitude, available in Google Maps, (http://digbig.com/4yfsg) allows the tracking, via a digital map, of friends and family through their mobile phones. Parents and social networking fans may consider this a good idea, but many privacy campaigners consider ‘Latitude’ to be more like an electronic leash. Is ‘Big Brother’ watching?

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