Buying and maintaining a good prospect database is a crucial part of any successful sales and marketing activity for any company. This article takes some of the mystery out of prospect data and helps you get the best from your own prospect data management. We will focus on business prospect data but will touch on residential prospect data.
How much data can I get?
There is an awful lot of potential prospect data around. There are around 23 million households in the UK which is a lot of potential prospects for most companies. For those that target businesses, there are around 3.3 million businesses in the UK and these are made up of public limited companies, limited companies, partnerships and sole traders.
The size of your own potential prospect list will be a subset of the totals shown above. For instance, if you know you will never sell to sole traders, because they are typically too small for your product or service, then your list drops dramatically from the 3.3 million shown above. If you only want to target those in the South East of England, then another dramatic drop; and so on.
It is critical that you select your list really carefully looking at the types of companies that have purchased from you in the past, and your projections about who will buy from you in the future. Identify the similarities between your clients and make your data selections using those similarities as selection criteria, or any other selection criteria that gives you the best match with your most successful clients.
Data Protection and all that stuff
If you store prospect data then you need to be aware of the data protection act. It is probably safest for you to notify (register with) The Information Commissioner’s Office. Have a look at the Information Commissioner’s website which contains all of the detail of the Data Protection Act and you can notify online - http://www.ico.gov.uk/
Other legislation
Other legislation to be aware of, and operate within, are the various ‘preference’ services that were put into place to limit unwanted telephone calls, faxes and mail.
The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a central register of telephone numbers that people have registered who do not wish to receive sales and marketing calls (www.tpsonline.org.uk). If you call a telephone number that is registered for the purposes of marketing or selling, then that person can lodge a complaint with TPS. If that complaint is upheld, then you can be fined up to a maximum of £5,000.
TPS was originally introduced for consumer telephone numbers but the definition of ‘consumer’ has always included sole traders and partnerships.
Any residential, sole trader or partnership telephone number can be registered with TPS so you must get your prospect list ‘cleaned’ by removing registered data records prior to making any calls. There is a 28 day ‘grace’ period between the time of registering a number and that number being active on the TPS list. This means that you must check your prospect list at least every 28 days against the TPS registered list to avoid calling new registrants.
Prospect data providers, such as Marketingfile.com, offer a TPS checking and cleaning service at low cost that enables you to check any prospect lists that you have against the TPS register. List providers can also clean your list on purchase.
Corporate Telephone Preference Service (CTPS), was introduced after TPS and provides the same service as TPS but only for limited companies and public limited companies.
Fax Preference Service (FPS), is similar to TPS but relates to faxes. So, people can register their fax number to avoid receiving sales and marketing faxes.
Mail Preference Service (MPS), is a central register of addresses that do not wish to receive sales and marketing direct mail. You can incur fines by mailing to a registered address.
The only way to completely protect yourself is to ensure that you do not contact a telephone number or address, registered with TPS, CTPS, FPS or MPS.
How accurate is prospect data?
Here’s an interesting thought relating to prospect data – 25% of the UK workforce changes employer or job role each year. That means that if you have a prospect list containing named individuals, and you haven’t updated those names for a year, then that list could be 25% in error.
Add to that the fact that companies move or go out of business without telling the direct marketing industry. They also change business line and other factors without telling the industry. Given the raw numbers of companies and households identified at the start of this article, you can see that it is a huge task to keep prospect data up to date.
It is safest to assume that the data will have inaccuracies in it so allow for them in your marketing and selling activities. Most importantly, clean your own prospect data every time you get an opportunity to do that. When you are cold calling, clean the data for every call that you make – check with the receptionist that you have the right company name, address, telephone number, etc. You will be able to achieve a very high hit rate of cleaned data records which means that you get something out of nearly every call you make.
Make sure you collect email addresses as you go – this will give you the basis for a low cost email shot in the future. Be careful about obtaining prospects’ agreement to receiving emails from you.
Where and how to buy data
There are a number of sources of data ranging from list ‘owners’ like Dun and Bradstreet or Experian who produce their own lists, to list resellers like Matketingfile.com who sell a wide range of lists that they buy from list owners.
A cautionary note here – there are a number of list providers that have a high minimum order value so be careful if you are looking for a relatively small list. Marketingfile.com have no minimum order value and you can buy a very small list to simply ‘try before you buy’. They also have a very good website where you can make your selections online. Well worth a look around.
As mentioned in an earlier section, it is important for you to select your data very carefully. The best way to do this is to do an analysis on the profit you get from your various clients – look at the past and project the future. Most companies find that 80% of their profit comes from 20% of their clients. Establish who the 20% are and look for common features amongst those companies – company size, industry, location, specialisation, etc. Look at the various ways you can select data and try to categorise your 20% profit-makers in that way.
Then use those categories to select your prospect data. Before doing anything with that prospect data compare it to any prospect data that you already have, and your client list, and take out any clients and current prospects. This is known as de-duplicating or de-duping. Again, list providers can usually help with de-duping at a low cost.
When buying your data you will be able to choose the elements contained in each record, e.g. company name, address, decision maker name, title, etc. You may have to pay extra for each data element. Expect to pay something like 15 to 20 pence per record for a single use license (see below for single use vs multiple use explanation).
Single use/multiple use data
Before you buy the data have a look at the terms and conditions of sale. Make sure they allow you to use the data in the way that you want.
You will probably be given the choice of buying the data for single use or multiple use. Look at how the contract defines each of these. The difference between the 2 will generally be these:-
Ø Single use – you can call the number once or until you get a reply, or mail it once, or whatever.
Ø Multiple use – you can contact the prospect as many times as you like; usually over a 12 month period.
It is generally accepted in the data industry that a single use data record becomes yours if you ‘validate that record’ during the course of calling (assuming your are telephoning those prospects). ‘Validating the record’ is generally accepted to mean changing 3 pieces of information within that record, and/or adding 3 pieces of information to that record. Make sure you check the license terms and conditions around data ownership in all cases.
Once you make your purchase the data is usually sent to you as a file such as a comma delimited text file. This can be opened in Microsoft Excel without too much hassle.
Managing data and using a Customer Relationship Management tool
A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system can be a great tool for managing data and for helping you keep control of your lead and appointment creation activities. Systems such as Sage Act! and Goldmine are low cost for a single user license and give you some useful functionality. They also have multiple user versions that give a much wider range of functionality. There are also a number of web based CRM’s such as SalesForce. Do a Google search on CRM and you’ll find lots to choose from.
Microsoft Excel and Access can also be used to manage your data. Make sure that you keep notes about the outcomes of your various contacts with all of your prospects at all times. If using Excel simply add a notes column and put the date and time against any notes you make. Keep a record of dates and times for call backs and all other activities. Adding a series of columns in Excel where you simply enter a ‘1’ for a call back, not interested, wrong number, or whatever, will enable you to group records for further processing. Think of this as your marketing pipeline where your raw prospect list goes in at one end, and some of them pop out the other end as a qualified lead or sales appointment.
A CRM tool will have the functionality embedded to handle these processes and give you the reporting that will help hone your targeting.
Discard old data
As you work through your data discard any data relating to a prospect who will never be in a position to buy from you. Be critical with these decisions, though. Make absolutely sure that they will never be in a position to buy from you rather than simply not interested at this time. For instance, a retired farmer is probably not worth keeping on your creative design prospect database. On the other hand, if you sell household insurance, a householder who is not interested today could be very interested in a couple of months time if they have a break-in in the meantime.
Track sources of leads and profit
As you work through your data working, no doubt, with a variety of marketing methods, keep a careful track of where your leads and appointments are coming from. Keep track of where your profit comes from. These will give you vital information you need to hone your selection criteria when buying prospect data in the future.
Copyright © Great Guns Marketing Ltd 2006