Dilbert

Everyday there seems to be a new place to find new data or a innovative technology to capture leads. In a business that’s 99% driven by data, I have found myself a little overwhelmed by all my options.  Being overwhelmed isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is usually a new feature that is able to enhance my process, or even get me data that I haven’t been able to find in the past. The one thing I’m always looking for and have yet to find, is a completely clean datasource. On average there is a 60% validity rate on phone numbers, and even less on email, when it comes to third party data sources.

I think it’s safe to assume that all reps hate calling on bad data and a lot of the time they are just going to move on instead of cleaning up the bad leads.  From a high level, it seems more cost effective to throw the bad data out and chase the clean data to close deals faster. However, if you break it down, you can actually increase the number of conversations and lower the cost per appointment, just by spending some extra time cleaning up data.

One of the first things we ask our clients is if they already have data and how clean it is. Most of the time they either have no idea, or they think their data is as accurate as any. After doing a quick test, we find a lot of inconsistencies and missing pieces. At LeadJen, every record that is being called on has been processed and verified by our data services team. As tedious as it may seem to some, it is definitely worth the time. It not only allows us to get the most from a list, but enables us to have the most conversations with the right people.

One of the hardest things to grasp in this process is the increase in cost per lead. Everyone wants data to be as cheap as possible. If you are going to have more conversations, which lead to more closed won deals, the cost of that data is minimal. So whether you’re buying a list from a third party or building it from the ground up, I highly recommend giving it a quick scan or have a team scrub the data to make sure that when it gets to your sales team, they are making the most productive calls as possible.