How to find the right person to contact at a business

Why the person matters more than the business

You can pick exactly the right business and still get nowhere because the email landed with someone who can't say yes. A note to a property manager about becoming the agency's go-to plumber may sit unanswered if trades are chosen by the head of the department. A florist who writes to a venue manager about weddings may be forwarded to the events team a week later, or not at all. Finding the person who actually chooses suppliers is half the work, and it is the half most owners skip.

If you haven't yet worked out which kinds of business to approach, start with our guide to finding business clients and come back once you have a list of names.

Who decides at common buyers

Job titles vary from one business to the next, but the split between the person who books the work and the person who chooses who gets booked is common. This is how it tends to fall at the buyers small businesses write to most.

Property manager or senior property manager

At a rental agency each property manager books repairs for their own portfolio, and the landlord approves the cost. Who gets added to the agency's list of trades is often decided further up by the senior property manager, the head of the department or the principal. Write to the senior person about joining the list and copy in a property manager only if you already know them. The business development manager at an agency is usually there to win new landlords, so they are the right contact only if you can send landlords their way, which is a referral conversation and not a supplier one.

Strata manager or committee

The strata manager (or body corporate manager in Queensland) arranges most repairs and gets the quotes, and the committee approves spending above set limits. Write to the manager, not the committee or the owners. Our guide to strata contractor panels covers how much a manager can approve on their own.

Office manager or practice manager

In a small office the office manager usually looks after cleaning, supplies, repairs and often the IT provider. In a medical, dental, physio or vet practice the same job is done by the practice manager, who is juggling staff and patients, so keep the email short and make it clear you can work around patient hours. In a large building with a facilities manager, the tenant's office manager may have no say over cleaning or maintenance at all.

Venue manager or events coordinator

These two want different things from you. The venue manager runs the building and books the cleaners, electricians, pest control and grounds work. The events coordinator talks to couples and companies planning events and recommends photographers, florists, bands and hire businesses. A cleaner should write to the venue manager and a photographer to the events coordinator, and getting it backwards usually means silence.

Site manager or estimator

At a builder the estimator decides who gets invited to price the next job and the site manager decides whether you get asked back. A small builder's owner often does both. Our guide to builders' subcontractor lists goes into each role.

How to find the right person honestly

None of this needs a paid database. The business has usually told you most of what you need on its own website, and the rest is one phone call away.

• The team or about page. Many agencies, strata firms and practices list their staff with job titles. Read the titles, not just the names, and note who heads the department you want.
• Published contact details. Look at the contact page and the footer. Some businesses publish a role address for maintenance, accounts or new suppliers, and if one fits what you offer it is the best place to write.
• Ring reception. Say who you are and ask one plain question: who looks after your trades (or cleaning, or event suppliers), and what's the best email for them? It is usually the quickest way to find out. Write down the name, the address and the date.
• LinkedIn, for reading titles. It is useful for checking that a person still works there and what their role is called. Read it, then go back to the business's own published address to write. LinkedIn's user agreement forbids scraping or copying profiles and data from the site, so don't build a list from it.
• The business's own listings and signage. A rental listing often names the property manager, and a builder's site sign names the company and sometimes the site contact.

If all you can find is a general address like info@ or admin@, write there and say in the first line who you hope it reaches: "Could you pass this to whoever looks after maintenance trades?" A short, clear email is easy for whoever reads the shared inbox to forward.

Use the address they publish, never a guessed one

It is tempting to see sarah.jones@ on one staff profile and guess that mark.lee@ works for her colleague. Don't. The Spam Act 2003 lets you infer consent to a commercial email from a published address only in narrow conditions: the address has to be conspicuously published, it must be reasonable to assume the person or business agreed to that, there must be no statement saying they don't want unsolicited commercial messages, and your email must relate to their work or role. A guessed address was never published, so that inference isn't available, and ACMA warns that you can't use a list built with address-harvesting tools either.

There is a practical reason too. Guessed addresses bounce, and bounces count against your sending reputation, which can push your next emails to junk (our guide on why business emails go to junk explains why). We don't restate the full rules here: our guide to whether cold emailing is legal in Australia covers consent, what every email must include and how to handle an unsubscribe.

Keeping contact details tidy

A person's work email and job title can be personal information. The OAIC lists employment details such as work address, contact details and job title among its common examples. The Privacy Act generally doesn't apply to a small business with annual turnover of $3 million or less, although some businesses are covered whatever their size, including health service providers and businesses that trade in personal information. The OAIC's small business page has a checklist if you're unsure.

Covered or not, a tidy habit costs little and keeps you out of trouble. For each contact keep the business name, the person and their role, the address you used and where it was published, and the date you found it. Don't share or sell the list. When someone asks you to stop, stop and note it, so nobody on your team writes to them again.

When you reach the wrong person

It happens, and it is often the start of a good introduction. If someone replies that it isn't their area, thank them and ask who it would be. People are usually happy to point you on, and an email that opens with "Jess suggested I get in touch" reads very differently from a cold one. Update your record when you do, because people move on and a list goes stale.

Finding the right name at fifty businesses is slow and steady work, and it is usually the part that slips when the jobs are busy. Curlew reads each business's website and writes to the address it publishes, in your business name, if you would rather hand that part over.