If you’re researching new clients and prospective leads, then phone numbers are equally as important as email. You’ll need to find the right phone number, in order to pitch your product or solution. However, finding someone’s phone number isn’t always easy.
Decision-makers and high-profile people are more than happy to list their emails (typically in their message signature) but may hesitate to include their personal phone number or may opt for a company line without personal extension. In this article, we outline the best tips, tricks, and hacks to find someone’s cell phone number by their name, how to get the best data on your leads, and how to uncover the owners of phone and cell phone numbers.
How to Find a Someone’s Phone Number by Name:
1: Use a Cell Phone Number Lookup Service
There are a number of online services that allow you to look up someone’s contact information. Here are 4 you can try
- COSLR is the most powerful sales activation platform available. You can find names, email addresses, phone numbers, social media accounts, and more. There is a database of over 500M local leads and 15M B2B leads. Best of all, you can message them within the COSLR platform.
- AnyWho is a free phone number lookup service in the United States. You can search the White Pages for someone’s phone number, but it does come with limitations. AnyWho won’t have everyone, but it is a great tool to keep in your arsenal when trying to find someone’s phone number.
- Lead411 is a B2B search engine that lets you search lead profiles by professional background, which can help narrow down who you’re looking for. Like other lead generation platforms, Lead411 enables you to find and download bulk lead data for your marketing strategies.
- Whitepages is the online version of finding someone in the phonebook. It’s similar to Anywho listed above and is very simple to use. All you need is someone’s name and location to find a phone number. The reverse-lookup tool is also great as it allows you to enter a phone number and see who it belongs to.
2: Check the Person’s Place of Employment
If you know the person’s place of employment, you can check with the company’s human resources department to see if they have a record of the person’s cell phone number. Be aware that HR may decline to give out a personal number to the random person calling. One trick would be to confirm if a fake number is accurate. For example, when calling HR you may say “I’m trying to reach Mike’s cell and I have it as 555-1234, is that correct?” People often won’t give the information you want but WILL correct you if you are wrong. They might reply “No, it’s actually 555-2345”
3: Search Social Media Sites
People often link their cell phone numbers on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. You can do a search for the person’s name and see if their cell phone number is listed in their profile.
- Linkedin is a great way to connect with other professionals. You can find someone’s phone number using Linkedin’s search engine. Find the person’s profile and click on their contact information. Keep in mind this tactic will only work if the person adds their phone number to their profile publicly. You can also do reverse searches of any phone number and see what person or organization it belongs to. In the COSLR dashboard, you can find an extraction tool if you want to bulk export this information.
- Facebook is a treasure trove of data. A lot of users register their mobile phone numbers because they have the Facebook mobile app. By entering a phone number in the FB search it’s easy to find out who the phone number belongs to. Facebook will return the information of the user linked to that phone number.
- Twitter, like Facebook, also has a lot of information on users including their phone numbers. When you log in to Twitter, visit the search bar and select “accounts” in the search criteria. Then enter the phone number and Twitter will return the information of the user linked to that phone number.
5: Use Free Reverse Number Lookup With a Search Engine
Typically you can find someone’s number on Google or other search engines. It requires some digging, but you can start by simply entering the person’s name and the area they live in. You can also try a reverse phone number lookup, by entering the entire phone number (area code included) into the search field, and see what comes back.
To improve the quality of searches, here are some tips to use on Google
- Quotes: Try using quotes around the phone number to minimize the guesswork for Google search. When you put your search parameters in quotes, it tells the search engine to search for the whole phrase. Example: “555-1234” (don’t forget country code and area code if applicable)
- Colon: You need to Google search for phone numbers on certain websites or domains. The syntax is very simple as shown here. Example 555-1234 site:adobe.com
- Number Range: Finding a range of numbers is something we don’t anticipate a lot of people using, but can come in handy if you’re looking for extensions of a primary company number. People that do need it, use it quite a bit. This will find extensions ranging from 1 to 9 Example: 555-1234 x 1..9
- File Types: Not all phone numbers are on web pages. Google has the ability to search for a specific file or file type. This can be very useful if you need a specific file type that contains phone numbers (PDF, DOC, PowerPoint, etc.). Example: Phone Number filetype:pdf OR Mobile Number filetype:doc
Conclusion
It is easier now than it ever has been before to find someone’s phone number. It still requires some work and creative searching. You may find personal phone numbers through free platforms, but if you want to find a phone number from a professional and do it at scale, then you need a professional platform like COSLR
Don’t forget that COSLR can help you expand upon data and leads you already have. Easily discover emails by uploading a CSV sheet with only 3 columns (first name, last name, and company name). COSLR finds the information and fills in the blanks!
