Identify potential customers
Little of this can be handed to software today.
This happens in the physical world, so software agents do not touch it. Automation here means robotics and machinery, which is a different market from the one mapped on this site, on a much slower clock.
| How automatable | Barely automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Physical, manual and inspection work |
| Jobs that do it | 12 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | None |
| O*NET activity | Identifying Objects, Actions, and Events (4.A.1.b.1) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 12 occupations that perform it.
- Identify group or individual target investors for a specific fund.
- Maintain assigned account bases while developing new accounts.
- Seek out new clients and develop clientele by networking to find new customers and generate lists of prospective clients.
- Identify prospective customers using business directories, leads from clients, or information from conferences or trade shows.
- Identify prospective customers, using business directories, leads from existing clients, participation in organizations, or trade show or conference attendance.
- Generate solar energy customer leads to develop new accounts.
- Identify prospective customers by using business directories, following leads from existing clients, participating in organizations and clubs, and attending trade shows and conferences.
- Identify interested and qualified customers to provide them with additional information.
- Contact previous clients for prospecting of referral business.
- Research and identify potential customers for products or services.
- Obtain names and telephone numbers of potential customers from sources such as telephone directories, magazine reply cards, and lists purchased from other organizations.
- Develop prospect lists.
- Locate and contact potential clients to offer advertising services.
- Identify resale opportunities and support them to achieve sales plans.
- Identify new advertising markets, and propose products to serve them.
What we would actually use
Nothing in our landscape addresses this work. That is the honest answer rather than a padded list: this activity needs a person present, or a machine rather than a software agent.
Nothing on this site applies. Automation here is robotics and machinery, a different market on a much slower clock, and no software subscription moves it.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
How people actually do it
Step-by-step workflows that name this activity, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
12 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Advertising Sales Agents
- Demonstrators and Product Promoters
- Door-to-Door Sales Workers, News and Street Vendors, and Related Workers
- Insurance Sales Agents
- Investment Fund Managers
- Real Estate Sales Agents
- Sales Engineers
- Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Except Technical and Scientific Products
- Sales Representatives, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Products
- Solar Sales Representatives and Assessors
- Telemarketers
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Identify business or organizational opportunities”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.