Transcript Six Keys to Generating More Sales Leads

CHAPTER THREE
Contact
Identification
The Importance of Accurate Contact
Information
It’s not really a secret.
Everyone hates cold calling, no matter
which side of the phone you are on.
An, according to our data, once you get to
the sales presentation, no one likes those
very much either.
Let’s look at the numbers (from the 2013
Crux Research/Bridgemark Solutions
Marketing Research Industry Study). Only
28% of the market research firms
surveyed have a dedicated sales staff. When you look at all market
research firms, they are making 3.3 sales presentations per month on
average. Only 40% of market research firms rate these presentations as
“very” or “somewhat” effective. And, not surprisingly, the
Crux/Bridgemark study showed that 72% of market research suppliers
do not enjoy sales presentations, and 60% consider them “not very
effective” or only “somewhat effective”.
On the client side, the average market research prospect takes 2.8 calls
per month (and on average one of those is from a supplier they already
use, usually about expanding their existing relationship). Market
research buyers don’t seem to think that these sales calls are very
effective - only 4% rate them “very” or “somewhat” effective!
In an open-end question asking how
sales cold calls could be better, here are
some typical client responses:
“Don’t call.”
“Don’t cold call.”
“Don’t call so often.”
60% of market research
suppliers polled describe
their sales efforts as
“inconsistent”.
So is it any wonder no one likes cold calling to generate sales
presentations? In my experience, especially in market research shops
with a “seller-doer” model, market researchers will do just about
anything to avoid cold calling. For staff responsible for both sales and
client work, client work trumps sales every time. So it’s no wonder 60%
of market research suppliers polled describe their sales efforts as
“inconsistent”.
Nonetheless, every market research firm needs sales prospects – real
people in target companies – in order to reach out and introduce their
services. But when you consider the costs of getting an accurate
prospect’s name, title, email, phone number, location, etc. – including
the professional time spent looking for the prospect, employee
frustration, and time wasted due to a lack of accuracy – it’s natural to
question whether it makes financial sense to have your staff look for
their own sales prospects.
So here are some tips to help you get more out of your time spent
reaching out to new potential clients:
1. Email Verification services – which can quickly check the emails in
your list to make sure they are still valid – are a fast, effective,
inexpensive way to weed out prospects in your database whose
information is no longer valid.
2. There are a seemingly endless number of list brokers who say they
can deliver a good list (as defined in the last chapter.) But, to-date,
we have not found a broker able to deliver even reasonably good
sales contacts in the market research industry. When considering a
contact broker, here are a few critical questions to ask…
 Have you worked in and understand the research industry?
 Do you offer a guarantee on the “bad” contacts that will

inevitably be included in the list provided?
Will you provide only net-new contacts, avoiding the ones I
already have? You probably have at least some contacts
already, so the ones you are buying should be incremental
to your existing contacts…right? Why should you pay for
contacts you already have?
Most list brokers are not interested in developing customized lists, based
on your specific needs. They make their money on volume, selling a
given list over many times to generate revenue. So, they want to sell you
the contacts they already have…not necessarily the contacts you need.
Wouldn’t it be interesting
to know how many other
companies (including your
direct competitors) those same
contacts have already been
sold to?
3. One of Bridgemark Solutions’ most popular services is providing
highly-targeted sales contacts to sales and research staff in market
research firms looking to develop new business. You determine
which companies you are interested in selling to, and Bridgemark
can deliver accurate and timely information on those companies
and contacts, including names, titles, addresses, phone numbers
and email addresses of your target prospects within those
companies. By providing a list of the contacts you already have
(and that Bridgemark Solutions will avoid), a fresh list of new names
is ensured. Using a variety of sources like Hoovers, LinkedIn, Zoom
Info, Data.com, TheList.com, etc., Bridgemark can take a lot of the
drudgery out of the contact identification process by delivering
hand-developed prospects for you or your sales team.
Now, having contact identification done for you certainly isn’t going to
make any one like cold calling, but at least when they do get around to
making those calls, they will be calling the right people. Reducing the
time wasted with calling contacts no longer employed in your target
companies can save you real money and significantly increase the
likelihood of success.