Guide to B2B Leads:

Ensure the Highest

Quality Business Data

Brought to you by Jigsaw

 Guide to B2B Leads: Ensure the Highest Quality Business Data

Your organization’s sales performance is only as good as your list of prospective leads. The right business data
means sales staffs can quickly get in touch with key decision makers and initiate the sales cycle. Incorrect or
outdated information can lead you on an expensive and time-consuming – not to mention frustrating – goose
chase with no chance at a sale.

Having the right information to explore new leads has become critical to the success of companies in virtually
every industry. That’s why more and more businesses are turning to data service providers to augment their sales
and marketing efforts. Business data providers not only collect the most up-to-date information for decision
makers throughout an organization, they update the lists – sometimes several times a year – to ensure your sales
staff is spending its time making the sale, not hunting for contact information.

This white paper will discuss how business owners and salespeople can source the freshest business data and
what to look for when choosing a business data provider.

Market drivers
What’s driving the sales industry to need real-time contact data? The truth is, as soon as a contact list is printed,
it’s out of date – that’s how fast the business landscape is changing.

High turnover leads to outdated information

The last five years have seen an upheaval in the business environment, from layoffs and mergers to company
reorganizations and failures. This means that the decision maker in place at a company last quarter may have
moved into a different role, or may not be at the company at all today. This also means that a contact list
becomes obsolete within a year or perhaps even a month after it’s compiled.

Lead volume is critical

Another reason companies are seeking fresh contact data is that the sales cycle is trending longer – customers
are waiting longer intervals between the first contact and the final sale. Over the last 12 months, 72% of
companies in the IT sector alone have reported an increase in buying cycles 1 . At the same time, many compa-
nies are decreasing sales budgets and staff so that fewer salespeople must make more contacts and spend an
increasing amount of time nurturing those contacts before making the sale. Because of the need to produce
more leads with limited resources of budgeting and/or staffing, 44% of B-to-B companies reported that gener-
ating high volume of leads became a greater challenge in 2010, a 9% increase from 2009 2.

B2B marketing challenges becoming more pertinent to organizations

1 IDC 2010 Sales Barometer Study (http://blog.salesadvisorypractice.com/2010/04/idcs-2010-sales-barometer-study.html) Michael Gerard, VP, IDC's Sales Advisory Service
2 MarketingSherpa B2B Marketing Benchmark Survey www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?ident=31726
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 Guide
Guide to B2B
to B2B Leads:
Leads: Ensure
Ensure the the Highest
Highest Quality
Quality Business
Business DataData

The problem with static contact lists

Contact lists that lack real-time data presents a huge obstacle in the sales process – one that must be overcome
for the sales process to even begin. Problems stemming from missing or outdated contact data include:

• Wasted time – sales staff spend lots of time chasing leads that don’t exist.

• Ineffective communications – if salesperson does get a name, it might not be someone in the organization
who is a decision maker or has buying authority.

• Low moral – sales staff are under increasing pressure to perform with limited time and resources. Continually
chasing false leads or not having access to the right information can cause frustration and could ultimately
impact job performance.

• Compromised sales performance - Often the responsibility of maintaining the list with updated contact
information falls to the sales staff – the same staff who are being asked to do more with less and generate an
increasing volume of leads with longer sales cycles. List maintenance becomes another administrative
activity salespeople must juggle along with the primary responsibilities.

According to IDC VP Michael Gerard, sales professionals spend an average of 20% of the work week on
administrative tasks. He recommends optimizing sales staff time by dedicating more time to analyzing
customer intelligence and preparing for customer interactions. Citing feedback from IT buyers in IDC’s 2010
Sales Barometer Report, Gerard says that over 50% of sales reps are insufficiently prepared for customer
meetings 3 .

The Solution:
A real-time contact database that keeps pace with changes in business environment
What’s needed to address the problems listed above is an online database that contains up-to-the-minute
business data for key decision makers in organizations in your target industries. The database must contain
complete information including direct phone numbers and email addresses to enable the use of multi-channel
marketing campaigns (e.g. a combination of e-mail and cold calling). In addition, the database must be easily
accessible from any computer at any location and require almost no maintenance by sales and IT staff while
providing the most accurate and timely information possible. The good news is that increasingly business data
providers are meeting market demand by going beyond the traditional, static pay-per-list model to online
Cloud databases that grow and update daily and provide virtually unlimited contact access for subscribers.

The shift toward Data in the Cloud

From 2009 to 2010 business data providers made a dramatic shift to online platforms and have heavily empha-
sized contact growth in response to client focus on lead volume as well as lead quality. According to a March
2010 B-to-B database comparative study, suppliers who compile business data via the Internet continue to
grow their files, and develop new ways to package and present their information. But the traditional B-to-B data
compilers have seen declining sales and considerable restructuring and consolidation during the economic
downturn 4. The use of software-free cloud applications across all industries has grown so rapidly in recent years
that it’s estimated that by 2014 50% of software deployments will be in the Cloud 5.

Providers who deploy a cloud-based model use the power of crowdsourcing among users to add contact data
and keep it fresh. In addition, business data providers that use the Cloud manage all technology and data-
related logistics – security, storage, backup, updates – so their clients get the data they want without the hassle
and expense of managing it using their own staff and equipment.

3 http://blog.salesadvisorypractice.com/2010/04/idcs-2010-sales-barometer-study.html

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 Guide to B2B Leads: Ensure the Highest Quality Business Data

The benefits of cloud based data

There are several important benefits of sourcing contact data from the Cloud:

• Optimizes sales staff time - because the database can be updated to reflect contact information changes in
real time, there’s a higher likelihood that the information you’re paying for is the freshest, most accurate
available. Sales staff can stop wasting valuable time chasing outdated or non-existent leads and focus on
making the sale.

• Maximizes customer interaction – databases are comprised of individuals who have the ability to influence
buying decisions within their organization. When your sales staff makes a contact, they’re speaking with a
decision maker and begin to build relationships that lead to sales.

• Improves sales positioning – when sales staff are rid of the burden of finding quality contact information,
they’re free to focus on gathering client intelligence, learning about the organization and building relation-
ships to better position for a sale.

• Simplifies data management – with Cloud-based data, users can get the contacts they want without hassle
and expense of managing data locally.

What to look for when choosing a business data provider

Choosing a business data provider represents a big investment – not only for your limited marketing dollars,
but also in terms of your time and human resources. Selecting the right provider for your business data can
result in time savings, improved efficiency and ultimately increased sales while choosing the wrong provider
will only exacerbate the problem of finding high quality leads and waste time and money.

The following are buying tips when selecting a provider based on a 2010 B-to-B comparative analysis study:

• Investigate thoroughly the data sources and maintenance practices of the vendors you are considering.

• Consider whether you want a breadth of contacts or breadth of companies—or both. Data source will
always be a factor in determining which compiler is right for you in the area of contacts versus companies.

• Be specific about industry selections. Find out if the vendor uses SIC, or some kind of conversion algorithm.
You want to know exactly what you are getting.

• Watch out for scams. A number of unscrupulous firms have entered the market claiming they can get you
any business names you want, but their data turns out to be stolen, inaccurate, or otherwise not usable.

• Test the data. Conduct a test (make sure it’s a large enough sample set of data) before you purchase and
verify the accuracy of samples records by telephone.

4 March 2010 B-to-B database comparative analysis, Grossman & Stevens

5 Shaugatuck Technology 2010 Cloud Business Solutions
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 Guide to B2B Leads: Ensure the Highest Quality Business Data

About Jigsaw
Jigsaw’s online database is the freshest, most accurate repository of decision makers across virtually every
industry. Jigsaw members get instant access to over 23 million leads all updated in real time using the power of
crowd sourcing from its 1.4 million members to ensure contacts are always fresh and that more key decision
makers are added every day.

Start improving your sales performance today. Go to www.jigsaw.com to set up a no-obligation trial member-
ship and get your first two contacts free. Or see us in the Data Cloud www.salesforce.com/jigsaw.

Contact Us:
Jigsaw
777 Mariners Island Blvd., Suite 400
San Mateo, CA 94404
Tel: 650.235.8400
www.jigsaw.com | enterprise.jigsaw.com

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