Approaching Stores for Feeds

[vincevincevince]

What strategies do you use when approaching a store (with whom you may or may not have an affiliate agreement) asking for a product feed?

If the store is in Froogle (i.e. must have a feed already?)

If the store does not appear to be database driven?

[zulu_dude]

I'm having this exact same issue at the moment.

My approach so far has been to send an email to their generic contact email address (normally found on their website), very briefly explaining what I'm about and asking for the contact details of their business development manager or (more likely) their sales director. In the email I also ask whether they have XML feeds available, on the off chance that they are willing to freely hand out the details.

I then wait a day for a response and if I haven't heard anything back, I follow it up with a phone call. It's far too easy to ignore an email- a phone call is more likely to succeed IMHO.

Then again, this all depends on the size of the store. Most of the ones I've approached have been fairly small.

[vincevincevince]

zulu_dude - thanks for sharing that. I've tried cold-calling a few but it seems impossible to get to the techie who could create or even know about the feed - and then I suspect that if I did get hold of the techie then he or she wouldn't have authorisation to decide about the feed...

...it's been followed up with an email - but that's got 'lost'.

[zulu_dude]

Maybe another way to approach it is to put the benefits (for their company) into normal english. I think most people wouldn't have a clue what an XML feed is, but almost everyone would know what it means if you said you'd like to partner with them to promote their products.

I'm not sure what your situation is and what you're wanting to do with the XML feeds, but could you possibly approach them with an offer to promote their products? As far as non-techie staff are concerned, this would be a good thing for their company, so they're more likely to pass you on to the higher level management.

Once you've agreed (with the management) in principle what you'd like to do, they can then pass you on to the techies to set up the nitty gritty.

So I would use this approach:
low level email/phone answerer --> sales person (--> sales manager) --> techie.

[vincevincevince]

Thanks for that input - I'm after the feeds for a price comparison site, so yes, there is a benefit for them. The site, however, isn't yet well established so the benefit is probably still unclear.