Half Your Customers are Already Dead … do you know which half?

It’s tough to sell anything if you don’t know the name of your buyer. 

That’s been the problem with Business to Business sales… “prospect databases” are hard to find and are rarely accurate. People move around and change jobs so rapidly that yesterday’s prospects are today’s wrong numbers.

Ruth Stevens, professor at Columbia Business School, says that more than 4% of your business contacts change jobs every month. Imagine — fully HALF of your prospect database will be worthless at this time next year. 

That’s a pretty good argument for following up rapidly… and for investing in a new breed of collaborative company search directory tools like Uplead.com to help you keep your data up to date.

A while back, I submitted my entire prospect database to an earlier product called Jigsaw. I let them score all 17,200 names against their massive reservoir of business names and contact info.  

We invested a huge amount of time keeping our sales lists current, so I expected to find out that my data was pretty clean. I guess hygiene is relative.  According to Jigsaw, 10% of my contacts were in their “graveyard” — people who have died, retired, or otherwise moved on, but for whom no forwarding information was available.  Another 10% had changed their phone numbers since I last contacted them!

I decided to allow the company to help me beef up my numbers. Although it’s unlikely that lists are ever 100% perfect, continuing to make regular contact, keeping our database current, and seeking help from effective search companies are now parts of our standard process.

Good data is the life blood of sales… And there’s no reason to let your data go bad. So keep in constant contact with your prospects, or be prepared to pay for someone else to clean up the mess.

Committed to your profits,

David Worrell

PS:  For more finance advice in a different package, visit our FuseCFO YouTube channel. And if you need some regular accounting or outsourced CFO work, contact us to talk more.

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