• by Peter Mollins , December 27, 2013

Sales and marketing professionals have a finite set of resources and should not spend time pursuing unqualified leads. Is the prospect too large, too small, in the wrong industry, or lacking other key attributes that would make it a worthwhile target?

In addition to qualifying the company, you need to know the people within the organization that make sense to pursue.  Sure, you can locate the CEO. But do you know the director of marketing who may actually buy your product?

Fortunately, there are a number of tools that can help you better target your sales efforts. They primarily fall into two categories: Market Intelligence Tools and Lead Quality Tools.

Market intelligence tools

One sales philosophy taught us to call, call, call. The more you call, the more sales you will make. But now the numbers game is more nuanced. Today's salesperson needs to approach prospects from a more informed approach, with a goal of adding value. This means well-targeted calls.

This is where a Market Intelligence solution can help you find companies and prospects that are in your sweet spot. Market Intelligence solutions are tools for building lists of prospects that match your criteria and make it easy for sales teams to narrow prospect lists.

Market Intelligence tools enable you to narrow your selling focus to just the companies and specific prospects that make sense to pursue. Many of these tools provide a plugin to the major CRM technologies, allowing you to surface relevant company data, including company size, industry and recent news. This data enables you to conduct solid, informed conversations with prospects. Market Intelligence solutions also aggregate information about prospects, so you can study specific focus areas before you call.

Lead quality tool

Once you have qualified the prospective company, you will need to locate and contact the right potential buyer. There is no need to pursue targets that only have the authority to say “no.” This is when a Lead Quality Tool can help locate relevant contacts and their details.

We all know it's not easy to track down prospect information. What is the email and phone number of the director of marketing you want to contact? Without that data, your team will spend a lot of time navigating phone trees, speaking to assistants and generally will not have conversations with the right prospects.

Is a Lead Quality Tool right for you? As you look at your database of prospects, ask yourself when that data was added and where it came from. Some may have from a trade show three years ago. Others may have been added on a piecemeal basis by long-gone sales reps. Still more came from forms on your Web site. In other words, some portion of your data is likely out of date, incomplete and even inaccurate. Consider that if you make 30 calls a day and you spend 2 minutes a day navigating the wrong extensions and operators, you have lost an hour from your day.

Lead quality tools help you to get the most current and complete information on your prospects. That means getting clean new data on the right types of companies. And it means cleaning up the data that you already have in place. Most Lead Quality solutions even integrate with major CRMs, delivering vetted prospect information into your most familiar workspace.

In summary

Modern B2C and B2B buyers are demanding greater value. When you know more about your prospects and customers, you can engage with them more intelligently. You are no longer just pitching a prospect -- you are becoming a valued resource, meeting needs and solving problems.