Money Can Buy Lots Of Prospect Data – But Will It Deliver Results?
In today’s insight-driven environment, prospect data generation is considered the be-all-end-all for inside sales – but is it a safe idea to pay for it?
In e-commerce, many businesses see paid prospect and lead data as the only viable solution.
E-commerce vendors offer quick sales at unbeatable discounts and snatch up a huge percentage of potential prospects, leaving other businesses with only two options:
- Partner with their e-commerce competitors to make sales
- Purchase a database of prospect contact information from third-party sources
It’s no surprise that the data-for-sale industry is booming and has grown into a massive market. U.S. firms spend over $19 billion on third-party data every year.
Unfortunately, most businesses paying for these lists aren’t aware of the inherent risks, which are massive and costly. Every year, U.S. companies lose a whopping $3 trillion on bad intel – that’s over 157x more than they pay for the data.
Businesses paying for data must do their due diligence to make sure the information is accurate, complete, and legally obtained.
What Should Businesses Consider Before Paying for Prospect Data Generation?
When a business pays for data, they tend to take for granted that the information is accurate and ready to help them build actionable business strategies.
Most businesses would be terrified to find out that these purchased databases are inaccurate more often than not. In a surprising number of cases, the company selling the data obtained it illegally or unethically.
That’s why it’s important for every business to ask a few questions before committing to paid prospect data generation, such as:
- When the data was last updated and verified?
- Was the data verified as it entered the database?
- What’s the verification process?
- Does the database include any duplicates? Invalid entries? Incomplete entries?
- What’s the recovery time?
- What’s the accuracy rate?
Don’t simply take their word for it either. Have someone who understands the industry ask these questions and demand results.
65% of businesses have inaccurate information in their database because 30% of all data goes bad each year. Email addresses, phone numbers, titles – regular data governance is critical to avoid paying for bad intel.
What Happens if Prospect Data Is Unsavory?
It’s not pretty.
Remember that U.S. businesses lose $3 trillion each year from bad data – but how?
Well, they’re using that bad intel to drive all their sales and marketing decisions. Personalization is more important than ever and it thrives on accurate data. Account-based marketing strategies – which about 60% of companies use – also require current and relevant data to succeed.
Research shows that only 20% of businesses are creating effective personalization strategies at scale and poor data is to blame. That’s not good news because 85% of buyers say they’re willing to dismiss a company that doesn’t personalize the very first interaction.
84% of B2B marketers plan to focus more on data in 2020. They should, too, because each piece of bad data that sits and decays in a database costs the company $100 – and that adds up quickly.
Effortless and Ethical Prospect Data Generation
With most third-party data lists, the quality of the information is completely unknown. With Flobile, there’s no guesswork thanks to the AI-driven data scientist-developed verification technology.
