Data is a valuable asset to any enterprise. It represents an entity’s customers, employees, vendors history, and more. Most importantly it represents information about key relationships for a company.

The Reason to Invest in Getting the Right Data for Outbound Prospecting

A company’s good use of accurate data can be the differentiating factor between running a profit or a loss, or developing a good or a bad relationship.  Having accurate data about your prospects is equally important to develop meaningful, strong relationships which foster the transition from prospect to customer.

To their credit, sales executives realize that having highly accurate, current prospect data is one major component contributing to a successful outbound sales prospecting initiative.  Yet many do not know how to find that specific data about their particular niche.  As a result, they either run frustrating, unsuccessful outbound prospecting initiatives or refrain from implementing them.

In either case there is a loss. Campaigns run with insufficient data waste time and money when poor results are the end result. Failing to run an outbound prospecting initiative risks passing up lucrative opportunities with a company and contact who may have a need for your product or services.

So what is a sales executive to do? You want to uncover opportunities and actionable market intelligence for their sales representatives. But you don’t want to waste the time, money and effort to run an unsuccessful outbound sales prospecting initiative even if it means potentially passing up additional qualified sales opportunities.

Spend the time and money to get the prospecting data right.

But how?

  1. Define your target market and target contact audience.  Review sales intelligence solutions that may service your particular niche market. I’ve been surprised at how much data is available for even the most unique niche. In this earlier blog post, I share my own experience with a few valuable sales intelligence resources: How to Select the Best List Sources for Sales Intelligence in Your Outbound Prospecting Campaign.
  2. If a resource looks to good to be true it probably is. Be sure to know what type of data you are looking for and get proof that it provides what you need. Ask for a reasonable amount of sample data to see if the data provided meets your criteria.
  3. If you do purchase a sample of the data ask for the company, contact, phone and email of a number of accounts. Set your criteria to get accurate data and test it.
  4. Purchase the data that best fits your needs.

While this is not a ‘silver bullet’ to ensure outbound sales prospecting success, having the right data is a key component in leading a successful outbound sales prospecting effort.