Guide: Where do I buy a Prospects List (Neat Trick Revealed)
Note: Part of the Series: “Building your Prospects Lists (Targets/Leads)”
In this article I will show you:
- Where TOP Sales Teams BUY their data from.
- The exact process I use to “vet” any data provider (Including 2 Advanced Tricks the PRO’s use)
- Two other options for building your Prospect Lists that the TOP Sales Teams use to keep their Pipelines Full. (Hint: There are BETTER options than Buying Lists — see at the end)
#1 Where Top Sales Teams BUY their data from:
When choosing to BUY a prospects list there are SO MANY providers that it can be tough to work out who to trust:
- Rule #1: DON’T completely trust anyone!
- Rule #2: When you do find a great source KEEP “vetting” the data because you remember Rule #1.
Please DO NOT buy a list from anyone that is NOT in the list below OR if you do like a provider that is NOT in the list below then put them through the Rule #2 Vetting Process below.
Simple pricing, great guarantee — I like their UI!
Great teams getting success with these guys:
Good Reach inside and outside the USA
Great Product; Great Team (Personally use this tool a lot)
There are a couple other good choices BUT the above should be enough to kick start your Sales Machine!
#2 The EXACT process I use to vet any provider
- Do they offer a guarantee on their data, greater than 90% accuracy? (Nobody offers 100% as its difficult when on average 5% of the workforce changes jobs monthly)
- Will they refund you or credit you with additional data IF you find inaccurate data? Better be yes!
- I choose a sample of their data, ideally 1000 records. IMPORTANT: I must be able to choose the list and I do not accept a sample list they send me! (Most good providers will provide a trial)
- I then randomly double check some (10–20) of the employee details in the list against LinkedIn. Does the person have the title the list provider says they have? Are they still working for the company the list provider says they are?
- Advanced Step #1: I take the list and double check the “email deliverability” statistics. We’ve automated this BUT you can do something similar using tools like:
NOTE: These tools are also NOT 100% definitive but they can help give you some insight into the quality of your list and what you can expect. If I notice a significant drop in deliverability stats then I get in touch with the list provider to explain.
6. Advanced Step #2: I take the list and I see what percentage of the list has social media data attached to it? The theory being that a good list will have more than 25% of the email addresses linked to a Social Media profile. I’ve automated this (for other reasons you will learn about a little later) but you could use tools like:
Simple to use: (Cool team!)
More Geeky (Tip: Has a UI to verify info WITHOUT being a developer once you login to free account)
Rule#2 Summary:
I constantly verify and double check the lists I am getting as feeding in junk data to your sales process can be a real time waster! I also KNOW that data is changing all the time so there will be issues and I want to eliminate them as easily as I can. That’s why my team automated the Rule#2 process of verifying data but you can follow the steps above manually to achieve the same results.
“Buying prospect lists is NOT the only OR best option”
