In Today's B2B Markets, Good Sales Require Excellent Data
Today, businesses are not as quick to purchase products or services as they once were. Per Sky Cassidy, CEO of MountainTop Data, slower "buying cycles" necessitates more than ever that B2B companies utilize ultra-clean and updated marketing lists to be profitable.
LOS ANGELES, June 4, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- B2B buying cycles are getting longer. This, according to a study by Demand Gen Research which revealed that 58% of B2B buyers said their buying decision took more time in 2017 than the previous year. [1] Correlating research found that longer sales cycles is one of the primary challenges for B2B marketers today (trailing only behind lead-generation challenges). [2] Sky Cassidy, CEO of MountainTop Data, a leader in data intelligence and data services, explains the evolution of the longer buying cycle this way: "Back in the day salespeople connected with prospects mostly by phone or in person. Today, because of the internet, the sales cycle is greatly lengthened as emails have become the primary form of communication." A report by Dun & Bradstreet concurs, stating that 89% of B2B professionals said the quality of their marketing data base was either "extremely" or "very" important. [3]
How much in revenue is lost because of inaccurate marketing lists? According to recent estimates, dirty data—data that is incomplete, outdated, or contains errors—costs U.S. companies anywhere from $2.5 to $3.1 trillion annually. [4] Because of the hidden influence of dirty lists within a company, administrators and executives are often not aware that "dirty data" is the reason for lower revenues and lost sales.
Money wasted by dirty data can come from many areas:
- Duplicates of customer profiles or leads can hurt a company's reputation and cause potential customers to ask off lists. It's estimated that duplicate data alone can add up to $20-$100 cost per record. [3]
- Inflated data storage fees. When there are duplicate names and address, when old names aren't removed, when lists contain errors, they can become inflated making companies pay ever-increasing storage fees.
- Salespeople waste time contacting worthless "leads" that are on dirty lists. This is time that could be spent contacting hot leads.
- IT personnel waste man hours. IT personnel can spend hours and weeks trying to clean up dirty lists. Since most IT people don't specialize in list generation and maintenance the wasted hours can quickly add up.
- False statistics. Companies live and die by statistics such as number of hot leads, number of mailings to their customer list, number of emails sent weekly, etc. These stats and more tell executives if they are having an impact on their public and help predict future sales. Dirty lists skew statistical results, throwing confusion into a company.
- Incorrect market research. A survey done on "customers" or "leads" generated by a dirty list may yield inaccurate information.
- False records for investors. When companies are invested in or acquired, company lists play a vital role. If contact records of leads, sales, customers and employees are not accurate these paint a false picture which can, in turn, scare investors off or invite legal problems.
Sky Cassidy warns, "The bottom line is it doesn't matter how creative or aggressive your B2B sales campaigns are, if they aren't built on quality, clean lists, then they won't perform."
With data decaying on average 30% over the course of a year, an annual data append is recommended. This involves taking your records and updating them with current, accurate, contact information. Doing this will assure you have the most high-performing database, to help boost response rates and sales. [5] It will also cut down on the wasted expenses associated with dirty lists.
Cassidy recommends that a company's CRM be scrubbed with basic internal processes on a weekly basis to assure all leads, customer info and sales data is accurate. He adds, "It's best to use a 3rd party data intelligence specialist on an ongoing basis when it comes to cleaning and appending lists. Just as people use a doctor to help fix a health problem, it is smart to use a data specialist to fix a company's lists." Normally, in-house professionals do not have the expertise and tools that a reputable 3rd party data intelligence company has at their disposal.
About MountainTop Data
MountainTop Data, headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, has been providing data services for B2B marketing for almost two decades. With an unrelenting commitment to quality they were the first company to guarantee the accuracy of their licensed data and business emails. They provide marketing lists, data cleaning, data appending, data maintenance and email campaign management services. Their data services have been used by some of the world's biggest brands across a multitude of various industries from multi-national telecommunication companies to office technology, to PR firms and more. For more information visit: https://www.mountaintopdata.com.
1. Nayar, Uday, and Merkle. "Data: The Key Differentiator In B2B Marketing." Demand Gen Report. 07 May 2019. Web.
2. "B2B Challenges: Marketing to a Long Sales Cycle." MarketingSherpa Blog, 16 May 2011. Web.
3. Staff Writer. Dun & Bradstreet /Content/Dam/English/Dnb-Data-Insight/Sixth-Annual-b2b-Marketing-Data-Report. Dunn & Bradstreet. 13 September 2018. Web.
4. Martin, Jeremy. "The Costs of Dirty Data." Bedrock Data. 16 November 2018. Web.
5. Roalf, Gemma. "Optimising Your B2B Database for a Strong 2019 – Econsultancy." Econsultancy, 7 Jan. 2019, web.
SOURCE MountainTop Data
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