Lead lists and business contact data are an integral need of almost every marketer or sales person in some form or the other. Whether you need to build a list of target customers or you simply need to locate one decision maker within your target account along with contact details, here are some sources you should take a look at to find what you need:

Hoovers Online - Online Business Information Directory (Subscription based)

OneSource -  Global Business Information Source (Subscription based)

ReadyContacts - B2B Custom Role Based Business Contacts List Building (Pay per contact delivered)

Jigsaw.com - Directory Of Companies and Business Professionals (Pay by points system or purchase exported lists)

Spoke - Business Networking Site (Business networking model)

Linkedin - Business Professionals Network (Business networking model)

iProfile - Global IT Business Intelligence (Subscription model)

ActiveContacts - Vertical Based Deep Rooted Business Contacts Databases (Subscription based)

Zoominfo - Directory of People and Companies (Subscription based)

Demandbase - Marketing List Building & Purchase Business Contacts (Pay per use model)

These are just 10 good sources for your lead, lists and business contacts requirements. Does anyone have more they could add to this list which could be useful?

Every book on business and best practices emphasizes why you should buy only as much as you need and when you need it. Overstocking anything in large quantities much before you are ready to use or process it is a cardinal sin in manufacturing or production practices. No one would dream of splurging budget in advance on piling up stock, most of which will not even end up being used. Then why do it with purchasing business contacts lists for sales or marketing campaigns?

I recently read a great post by Brandon Hull of SalesTeamTools.com titled “Sales Leads: Why Buy 5,000 When You Only Need 50?” which simply resonates the point we drive to our customers as well as other marketers.  Build more focussed lists of business contacts that you need and ‘pay as you go’ so that you are not paying for what you dont need or dont need at this point of time.

Here are some reasons why it makes sense to take only as much as you need:

• Spending thousands of dollars on an annual subscription to a large database like which have millions of contacts when you may use a few hundred contacts through the year would be paying for something you dont need.
• Investing a sizeable portion of your budget on a large database subscription in advance means you are blocking a part of your budget and you have incurred a cost well before you need to.
• Business contact data is perishable and has a shelf life. Purchasing a large list well before you are ready to run your campaign will be a waste with data going bad while its waiting and will need to be cleansed before its ready to use again.
• Smaller customized lists tailored for your campaign and has only those contacts you need will help you measure your ROI a lot more clearly and give you better results for your spend.
• By paying for only as many contacts as you need you can control your costs and stretch your lead generation dollars much further by controling waste
• You break away from the bad habbit of trying to pitch to every company out there whether qualified or not just because you have their contact information and start making your campaigns more focussed by acquiring contacts only within accounts that you feel are qualified.

Everyone who is visiting your website is atleast somewhat interesting in your products and services or something within the domain. Most traditional analytics solution give you just a purely digital description of web traffic. That is helpful but not actionable, atleast for B2B marketers. Most B2B marketers want to know WHO it was who visited the website and if she is coming back again, and how many times and what is she looking at. That is actionable information and now there is a superb tool available for anyone who wants to do this, for FREE. Its the newly launched Demandbase Stream solution that has a slick interface for keeping you and your team abreast of WHO is coming to your website. I would highly recommend using a data cleansing and lead qualification process to whet the leads before calling them “actionable” from a sales perspective. Give it a swirl and post your comments here.