Where does B2B prospect data come from - and how much should you be paying for it?
Data is both the lifeline and curse of a B2B sales team. Good prospect intelligence is a critical part of the sales process. Find your most successful salesperson and it is almost guaranteed that they spend extra time researching, digging through various resources, compiling competitive intel, and generally developing a deep understanding of their prospect – before they reach out with the first sales pitch.
However, ask the same salesperson about the biggest barriers to selling and one of the items at the top the list will also be data. Noisy data, confused data, CRMs cluttered with data. As I mentioned in a previous post, technology advancements have made it ridiculously easy to import vast quantities of data into your sales organization – to the point that its easy to drown your salespeople with data and make it harder to do their job.
One way to help solve for the need for good, reliable, and usable data is to recognize where your prospect data is originating – and what types of insights that data can support. There are four main places from which prospect data originates:
1. Government related data: The vast majority of your data comes from data that you can get for free if you know where to look and have the patience to dig it out. Almost all the lists and subscriptions you buy, including the major data platforms, are repurposing publicly available data and delivering it in a more friendly user format (the government is not known for making data downloads overly easy). If the prospect you are targeting touches the government in any way, chances are there is a public form available somewhere with their data on it. An easy and common example for this is non-profit data. Your organization can spend money to have non-profit data served up one record at a time through a web-based interface – or you can go to the IRS directly, pull down all 1.8 million records, and query them to your heart’s content. Both ways have value, but one has an ongoing charge, while the other is a one-time build. The IRS, Secretary of State, Office of Personnel Management, FDIC, the SEC – and many more government organizations - serve up your prospect data every day.
2. Company proprietary data: Companies collect data on their customers – and many of those companies are willing to sell that information to other companies in some format. Most consumers are used to this on the B2C side, but it also happens on the B2B side. Institutional data and behaviors can be sold between companies – which is what most claims of “proprietary” data sources are referencing on data vendor websites.
3. Panel surveys: When you read headlines that start with, “XX% of small businesses…”, then a representative panel is being surveyed to generate that insight. There is no magic data source that shows what business are thinking. Census data is often leveraged in this space to generate insight, but that is simply a larger panel structure – it’s still a representative sample. There is nothing wrong with this approach for generating insights but recognize that there is not a magic data source for this type of work. It’s a panel, generally compensated in some way, that is being surveyed for opinions which can be turned into data.
4. Individual websites. Depending upon your prospect pool, you may be purchasing data that has been aggregated from individual websites. There are many companies that sell data that has been scraped – either manually or with a program – off public websites. Occasionally you can also find a helpful blogger, trade association, or other group that has worked to create lists of pertinent companies for their own reasons – which you can leverage for your own purposes. With a little internet sleuthing, you can often find a list of companies that fit your prospect profile.
That’s it – that’s where the majority of your prospect data comes from. Unwinding the mystery of the data sources can help you determine which data is worth paying for – and which data sources might be redundant. It is very common for data vendors to sell each other data – which means that enrichment services from one data vendor is likely to be very similar to another, and you likely do not have to pay for it twice.
Once you understand your options for obtaining data, you can then spend some time thinking about the best way to utilize it. Having a plan for your prospect data is arguably more important than the data itself, so that you can arm your sales teams with actionable insights that shorten the path to revenue (and not just create noise). Better data governance and planning on the front side of your sales process means a flatter funnel and more time for your sellers to do what they do best – sell.