Here’s a question for you: What’s the real cost of using poor data sources in your business?
Everyone marketing and selling to corporate training and HR is looking for a silver bullet to reach qualified decision makers. While there is no one right way to market to this sector, one thing is clear – you must avoid the “bad data trap” if you are to achieve success selling to these markets.
Exhausting your time trying to manage poor data while marketing your products and services can cause immense setbacks to your business.
Using “inexpensive” lists with inaccurate information will negatively impact your business development efforts – and your bottom line.
Primary issues caused by using inferior data include:
*LOST TIME
Your well-paid, professional sales reps are now forced to WASTE their valuable time and energy wading through all that bad data, trying to find any prospect worthy of a conversation!
*LOST SALES/OPPORTUNITY
If your reps are wading through poor quality data, they are NOT spending that time speaking with qualified decision makers, nurturing valid leads, managing current accounts. This is a huge issue.
Forcing your reps to waste their time leads to decreased morale and reduced earning potential.
Basically, using poor quality data creates a huge waste of time and energy.
So, HOW MUCH TIME & MONEY IS REALLY WASTED?
On average, time spent calling on training & HR organizations “in search of” the right contact breaks down like this:
• 75% of the time is spent LOOKING for the RIGHT person, and
• Only 25% of the time is actually spent communicating with them
So – how much money might you be wasting? Let’s run some important numbers:
- Assume you are paying $42* per hour to a sales person (*Assumes an average sales rep cost of $87,500 per year in salary and benefits.)
- Assume that rep spends 50% of their time prospecting (20 hours/week)
- Now, assume that 75% of THAT time is spent searching for decision makers (15 hours/week).
- So, how much money is WASTED prospecting?
- $631 per week PER SALES REP
- $2700+ per week PER SALES REP
- $32,000 per year PER SALES REP
Now, what if you have two, four or six sales people? The waste is staggering.
- Ask yourself, “Can we afford to continue wasting this much money?”
To avoid this “bad data” trap, we recommend three easy steps to help achieve greater sales productivity while increasing your bottom line.
Step 1:
The obvious first step is this: you MUST locate a high quality source of leads — preferably decision maker contacts.
Find out: Is your market intelligence partner really just a “list broker”, compiling and selling inaccurate data from other sources? OR — do they build a market intelligence database from scratch, like Mentor Tech Group?
What’s the difference?
List brokers aggregate data from other lists. The result? Data that is often old, outdated, and inaccurate – otherwise known as Bad Data.
But market intelligence OWNERS, like Mentor Tech Group, create a database in-house, by hand. MTG’s database is built via personal conversations with each contact in our database. We do not compile information from other lists. We create and maintain our own database by speaking with and qualifying each and every contact as a decision maker within their organization. This allows us to categorize each contact in our database by Job Code, giving you more detailed information about each contact’s role and responsibilities.
Our database is built by an internal team of “Market Intelligence Consultants”, each of whom is a seasoned industry professional. These are not “telemarketers” simply asking how to spell a contact’s first and last name, or verifying titles. Rather, they are highly-trained professionals, who speak with each contact personally to verify their decision making responsibilities and capture invaluable sales notes to maximize your sales team’s outbound efforts. This is not like the typical data you will find available from list brokers – this is Market Intelligence, providing you with more insight into each contact. Our “MICs” make over 100,000 phone calls each year to build and maintain this information – for YOUR benefit!
By connecting over the phone, they can ask key questions and make a judgment call to determine IF the prospect merits membership in the MTG database. The result? Highly accurate, decision-maker data for more effective prospecting. This is VERY different from the data you will get from any typical list broker.
Step 2:
Once you have a high quality source of leads, you must effectively market to them, nurture them with value-added content to keep them engaged with you. The goal is to provide valuable insights and information, as you build trust and confidence in your brand and offering.
It is imperative that you create an ongoing lead nurturing outreach effort, to develop prospects and remain in front of them at regular intervals. Then, when their elusive time of need arises, they will think of you first. Being “the last one in the door”, will make you “the first one they think of” when looking for a solution in your space.
Step 3:
Provide your business development team with a high quality CRM system to track, monitor, and manage all prospect and customer information. Research your options carefully when choosing a CRM system – the low priced option may not be the best solution for your business needs. Free options may sound good at the start, but they offer limited ability to create customized campaigns or to sort, track, and report on important data down the road.
Most CRM systems provide an array of reporting capabilities, so be sure to create fields containing drop down pick-lists to capture critical information you can then report on later, including: reason for won/lost sales, opportunity stages, last outreach date, last call result, marketing responses, etc. Use this information to create tickler files, targeted marketing campaigns, and revenue forecasting!
The Bottom Line
The bottom line is this: you must BEGIN the sales /marketing process by using high quality data, or the entire process will be ineffective right from the start.
Avoid the bad data trap…
Give your business developers the decision-maker contacts they seek by using Mentor Tech Group’s market intelligence data. Then, implement a long-term marketing strategy to nurture and develop those leads over time.
Remember, not everyone will be ready to buy when you first contact them. But, with a high quality database of decision-maker contacts, provided by Mentor Tech Group, an ongoing marketing and lead-nurturing campaigns, you will be on your way toward achieving sales success!
Stop using bad data. Calculate the ROI you could see by using MTG’s high-quality, drilled down list of decision-makers in your industry – then contact us for a customized list quote.
To learn more, or to schedule a custom demo of our proprietary ROI calculator, please contact Mentor Tech Group today at: (651) 457-8600, Ext. 1.
