We can all agree that sales leads are critical to any business. Buying a Business List or some call it a Sales Leads List is a fast way to prospect for the most qualified leads. How to choose the right business list is the first step and perhaps the easier of the two. However, how to use it effectively to generate sales leads may be a little more complicated especially if you are not experienced. Below I compiled a few things you should know about Business Lists or Sales Leads Lists, how to buy them, how to use them and finally how to get the most out of them.

How to buy a business list or sales leads list. Lists are typically categorized a couple of ways; by industry or geography such as; nationwide, state, city, etc. The most common lists contain names, addresses, phone numbers, business categorization and where available sales and employee figures.

The number one thing I can tell you is NO list is perfect so I wouldn’t get too caught up with finding the “perfect list” and spending thousands of dollars on it. Businesses are changing numbers and people frequently as well as addresses so it is impossible for any list company to keep it up to date 100% of the time.  So rather than spending thousands on a so called “perfect list” that isn’t so perfect, I would suggest finding a more affordable list that is still big enough to generate solid leads even if the failure rate or bounce rate is 30-40%. However, I would suggest at least choosing a business list that is updating their information regularly against the NCOA (the USPS National Change of Address), which will help to minimize costly mailing list delivery failures that can add up. In the end, marketing or sales prospecting is all about the bottom line. Remember that if you are emailing, faxing and/or phone broadcasting it generally doesn’t cost you much for failed attempts. Keep the bigger picture in mind, which is a great segue way into the next topic.

How to get the most out of your business list and/or sales leads lists. Although I will not get into too much detail and discuss in-depth the best approaches, I will quickly hit upon a few pointers, if you will. One great way to prospect for sales leads is to purchase business list leads for a given geography or for specific business categories and then communicate with them quickly and cheaply using electronic means. By leveraging these large lists with cheap communication and a great offer you can quickly and cost effectively bring in solid sales leads, people or companies that are actually interested in your products or services.

As I alluded to above, I would suggest using various communication channels such as mailing, cold calling, emailing and faxing as they can all be effective. Set up a solid communications campaign that utilizes or piggy-backs each other such as sending a letter or fax and following up with a phone call.  Just don’t send one message, not hear back and assume they are not interested. Instead send a constant flow of messages over time. Any good marketer will tell you that on average you will need to communicate with a prospective customer 7x before getting he/she to respond.

Also, tailor your messages. Sending the same message and only changing the communication method may not be enough. By tailoring it to each individual, even as simple as inserting the customer’s name or mentioning the company’s name or location, the greater the likelihood you develop a “conversation” and not fail into the proverbial “spam” category.

Lastly, and this is very important, you must be sure to check local laws on such forms of communication to ensure you do not break any laws.

Tags: business list, business lists, buy business list, buy business lists, Sales Leads Lists

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.