10 Reasons Your Lead List Needs To Be Stellar

If your organization relies on sales to survive, you know the value of a good sales lead list. But calculating the damage a bad lead does to your business is an eye-opening way to illustrate the importance of good data, done well.

Read on to learn 10 factors you need to consider when contemplating the costs of a bad lead.

Direct Costs Of A Bad Lead List

1. Wasted labor costs marketing: There’s no way around it: generating leads costs money – and it doesn’t matter if those leads are good or bad. The money your marketing team invests in generating leads is just one of several direct costs you need to calculate.

2. Database maintenance costs: Data and its maintenance cost money, whether you’re simply paying for an email list on a mail client service or investing thousands in a massive database management system.

3. Increased bounce rate: For more businesses, email marketing is king. Have the wrong emails on your list will lead to an increased bounce rate and the potential for blacklisting from your mail client service.

4. Print costs: Contrary to popular belief, direct mail is not dead. In fact, many businesses are finding that direct mail has re-emerged as a surprisingly effective marketing channel. That’s only true if your print pieces are getting into the right hands. If they are getting into the wrong hands, your investment is wasted.

5. Wasted labor costs sales: Your sales team is going to make an investment in time and effort to close the deal. Their labor is a direct cost that goes to waste if their efforts are unsuccessful.

Indirect Costs Of A Bad Lead List

6. Lost trust: Customers rely on you to provide them with goods and services that they need and want. Developing a long-term relationship based on trust and reliability can be a key to creating a successful sales funnel that results in regular repeat business – and the long-term viability of your business. Bad leads – and the sales efforts that surround them – erode that trust and its effectiveness in generating sales.

7. Resentment: Your sales team relies on the lead list the marketing department provides them. For a smaller operation, that may be just one person sharing a database with another member of the team. Either way, the sales department needs to know that what the marketing department is doing supports them and provides them with valuable data.

8. Brand damage: Getting the wrong message into the wrong hands at the wrong time does more than cost you a sales opportunity. It also harms your brand’s reputation as a reliable, relevant business.

9. Lack of relevance: Whether it’s pitching a purchasing decision to someone in the marketing department or asking the transportation division if they need a website refresh, sending the wrong message to the wrong person due to incomplete data is a quick way to show that you haven’t done your homework.

10. Missed opportunities: Without the right information, you are missing opportunities which will cost your company money down the line.

Transform Your Bad Lead List Into A Great Sales Lead List

It can often take very little modification to turn a bad lead into a good one: updating a contact name, correcting an email or applying a change of address all will help make your lead list more effective. The right company can append your entire list to transform bad leads into good ones.

If you’re ready to make sure your lead list isn’t costing you, it’s time to set up a consultation with MindEcology. Click here to get started. We do good data, and we do it well.