List Building: 5 Ways to Generate More Leads for Your Sales Team
June 5, 2013
A few months ago, I wrote a blog post about how outbound sales teams should leverage marketing to help them with lead list generation. While that collaboration is great, someone is still stuck with the difficult task of generating lists for the outbound lead generation team, and finding a reliable source of quality lists is a major challenge for just about any organization. Often the best strategy is to develop an internal process for list building, finding and generating leads from a variety of different sources.
For those of you responsible for generating lists there are a variety of different ways to go about it, so creating a list acquisition strategy can help you structure and track you approach. Here are five categories of sources that you can use to develop a list building strategy.
1) Online Company/Contact Databases
Online databases typically offer free limited-access memberships, as well as paid memberships with access to a broader set of information. Many also offer corporate subscriptions so that companies can furnish all employees access to the database. Some allow data exports, while others such as LinkedIn function primarily as a portal or social network.
Examples: LinkedIn, Data.com/Jigsaw, Manta, Hoovers, InsideView, NetProspex, Lead411, RainKing, iProfile, DemandBase, DiscoverOrg, OneSource, ZoomInfo
2) List Directories, Brokers, and Providers
These companies typically leverage third-party databases and sell lead lists that fit a set of criteria, as opposed to selling access to the database.
Examples: ContactDB, infoUSA, BB Direct
3) Published Company Lists
Business journals and publications will often publish their own lists of the top companies in a particular category. These lists are typically free and publicly available, but some specialty publications will charge a fee for access to the entire list and related data.
Some of the categories are quite general, such as the Fortune 500 (the 500 largest companies by revenue), while other lists are much more specific, such as the IR 500 (largest Internet retailers), or the Solution Provider 500 (largest IT solutions providers).
Examples: Fortune 1000, Fast 500, Inc. 5000, S&P 500, IR 500, Solution Provider 500
4) Specialized Directories/Groups/Associations
A wide range of specialized directories, groups, and associations can be used to find companies within a specific vertical or category. Many of these are free to access but are not always set up as directories, so they require some additional effort to find information on the members in the list.
While these can be great sources, they often are not always easily identifiable. This is where online research and feedback from the lead generation team can be very helpful, pointing the list acquisition team to an excellent source of leads that they may not have found otherwise.
Examples: National Center for Educational Statistics (data on educational institutions), Flex Monitoring (data on critical access hospitals), Redbooks (data on advertising & PR agencies), Crunchbase (funding data on technology companies), local chambers of commerce (listings of small businesses across multiple verticals with in a target geography), Clinicaltrials.gov (records of all clinical trials and biotech and pharmaceutical companies sponsoring the trials), Biospace Regional Groups (biotech and pharmaceutical industry association)
5) Website Metrics Databases
In recent years, a number of companies have started collecting website analytics and creating databases to track the information. Some of these sites offer paid and/or free access to the databases, which can be used to generate a list of companies based on their website traffic, number of pages, website applications, advertising networks, and other data points.
If you’re trying to target companies that get a high volume of website traffic, or basing your criteria on where they advertise, these might be great resources.
Examples: Alexa, Quantcast, Compete, comScore, GeoEdge
To build a list acquisition process, identify the top sources for your company in each category, and then you can go down the list systematically collecting data, and refreshing your data periodically. This will help you ensure that your target market is covered.