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?

Just the other day we had a call from a potential customer who had a business contact list requirement and called to inquire about how we could help build one for him. The discussion went well and then hit the brakes when he discovered custom role based list building would cost more per lead delivered as compared to buying a single contact from an existing database such as Jigsaw.com or even purchasing a pre packaged contact list. The turning point was a question that hit him right away which was “why should I pay a premium for a custom business contact when I can pay less per contact by purchasing a large list instead?”

There is a difference. When you purchase a list of business contacts you are buying a list that was created based on some criteria and though the costs are lower, you are relying on the fact that some percentage of those contacts will be the right decision makers to receive your marketing message or sales call.  In a custom role based list building effort every account is called into individually and the best decision maker for your message is locatedensuring that you are targeting the right person within your target account. In this respect, short of qualifications based on asking qualifying questions, these contacts are more qualified as leads compared to ready lists or databases and yield higher returns. 

Lets say a company has a CRM software which they need to pitch to potential customers. A custom role based list building service would identify decision makers or key executives within IT who overlook CRM requirements for the company and hence you know you are reaching out to the right person. It takes away part of the ‘trial and error’ aspect associated with a title based list where although the titles maybe along the lines of your potential decision maker, a lot of time and energy may end up being wasted on trying to connect with the wrong decision makers. So while purchased lists and contact databases like Jigsaw are great sources of title based contacts and probably better for a bigger source of volume raw leads, the role based list building option would be worth the premium if you are going for a more focussed, more qualified set of leads where “what the decision maker is responsible for” is important. In our experience, its well worth the premium and the ROI should speak for itself.

Continuing from our last post on Linkedin Vs Jigsaw For Your B2B Business Contacts, we’ll move on to two more heavy weights as sources for B2B marketers and sales people to build their target lists of leads and locate business executives. Hoovers and Zoominfo are well established sources for locating business contact information with different approaches. Both of them have their pros and cons which is what has to be weighed out before you decide which one best suits your needs. Here is a an overview of the two contact sources:

Hoovers

• What is it?
  • Hoovers is arguably the largest proprietary company information database with detailed company profiles and information on over 25 million business organizations. The database has detailed company overviews, locations, addresses, financial figures, competitors, news releases and key executives for each of these companies making it the gigantic resource on company information it has been known for.
• How do you locate contacts?
  • Hoovers is a subscription based database and while there are a set of free access companies, to get the most out of it you will need a subscription to get started. These can range from $75 per month for the most basic to considerably more for an enterprise subscription. The search criteria is quite extensive and you can search for both companies or contacts and even generate lists based on some parameters that matches your target set of accounts and contacts. Hoovers does offer Salesforce integration to populate a companies Salesforce accounts with the company or contact information they may need straight from its own data. Alternatively, lists of companies with executives can be exported into csv sheets and used
• What are the pros of Hoovers as a business contacts source?
  • With over 25 million organizations in the database its easily one of the most comprehensive sources of company information you can have access to. Along with its network of sources, Hoovers has managed to keep this enormous database up to date and the company information is quite reliable
  • Each account or organization is profiled with rich company intelligence which is valuable for sales persons and each contact or executive comes with a title and often with other details such as a bio and email address
  • The database is ideal for building target B2B lists and the export function ensures you can put all the data you need into a csv format and upload to your own CRM or application
• What are the cons of Hoovers as a business contacts source?
  • Not all the contacts will have complete direct contact information like direct phone numbers, direct addresses and email addresses so from a campaign perspective some amount of work may be required if you wish to make contact with these executives via email or direct mail
  • Hoovers provides users with high level key executives within companies which are mostly C-level to VP level heads of the important functions of the company. It may not be suited to your sales or marketing efforts if your best target contact is someone deeper within the organization like a manager or director level decision maker

Zoominfo

• What is it?
  • Zoominfo is an intelligent search engine which is built for searching company information and profiles. With about 3.9 million companies and 42 million people that can be searched, it provides a good source for business contacts and has two products ZoomExec and ZoomPower Sell specially made for sales and marketing to generate their lead lists
• How do you locate contacts?
  • Depending on whether you need high level executives at your target accounts or a wider range of business contacts you can select between the ZoomExec and ZoomPower Sell paid subscriptions. Once you are a registered user you can search by company names, revenue ranges, industry, contact job titles, level, geography and more. Each of these contacts comes with required contact information in terms of phone numbers and email addresses. Company information and profiles are also quite extensive and will provide most sales perons with the details they would need to know
• What are the pros of Zoominfo as a business contacts source?
  • With the Power Sell version having utp 25 million contacts at 3.9 million companies Zoominfo may not be the largest database but definitely more than sufficient to meet the needs of most b2b marketers and sales persons
  • If you need only higher level key executives the option of being able to subscribe to the smaller ZoomExec helps provide a more cost effective option to subscribing for what you may not really need
  • The search functionality is great to generate exactly the kind of lists you need by selecting your parameters and its ideal for building b2b target lists that can be exported and uploaded to your CRM
  • The contacts come with an email address and a phone number making it perfect to use for phone based reach outs and email campaigns as well
• What are the cons of Zoominfo as a business contacts source?
  • It may not suit your requirements if your target contacts are more specific in role as the contacts are a mix of contacts across different organizations and not role based contact which may be better suited to those selling more niche products to specific decision makers
  • Since most of the data is from search based technology and the size of the data is vast, over time the quality of the data can deteriorate or may not be as relevant
  • If you don’t require a full years subscription or are not likely to make the best use of the volumes of contacts or data throughout the year it may not offer a cost benefit as a pay per use model might since you are paying a subscription fee

All said and done, both of these are proven sources of company data and offer great value in their own ways. Evaluate them carefully see whats best suited for your own requirements. Stay tuned for more businiess contact sources!

When you are looking for decision maker business contacts within specific target accounts there are a a few names that instantly come to mind like Hoovers, Onesource, Spoke, Jigsaw, Zoominfo, ActiveContacts and Linkedin to name some of them. While each of these are great sources for company information and locating business contacts and decision makers in companies, they are quite varied in terms of what they offer and the model on which they are based. While selecting a source for your contacts its good to know what these are and weigh them out to determine which is the best source for your specific requirements. Here’s a quick overview on Linkedin.com and Jigsaw.com, two contrasting models that revolve around business contacts and b2b leads:

Linkedin

• What is it?
  • Linkedin is an online business network built to connect business professionals much like social networking sites such as Facebook.com, Orkut.com & Bebo which are a network of friends and social relationships. Users sign up and setup a profile for free and start linking to other connections or professionals they know who also have Linkedin accounts. This will give you access to not only your connections profile information but their connections and connections’ connections as well. In short the more connections you personally know and add to your account, the larger the business network you will have access to.
• How do you locate business contacts?
  • Once you have built your network by adding connections you can search through your network of contacts by various criteria such as company name, location, industry, keywords, contact names, titles and so on. By clicking on a contact name you will have access to any information that contact has made available on his/her profile which can include a lot of detail such as previous employment history, position, job role and responsibilities, interests, education background as well as testimonials from others who have worked with them. In short there is usually a lot you can tell about the person professionally from viewing their profile which is a huge plus for sales and marketing professionals
• What are the pros of Linkedin as a business contacts source?
  • Sign up and setup is free, you can get started and build a business network of contacts over some time without any upfront investment
  • If you know about 50 people who you can add as connections it can give you access to up to 2 million contacts or more
  • Users often provide a lot of details about themselves professionally from current position, roles, responsibilities, areas of specialization and more which can be extremely valuable to sales and marketing efforts
  • Since users update their profiles and information by themselves most of the data is quite reliable and makes this model one of the stronger sources in terms of data quality
  • With over 25 million users signed up it provides a good range of contacts at both executive as well as more deep rooted levels
• What are the cons of Linkedin as a business contacts source?
  • Since is based on a networking model, the depth of contacts you will have access to is dependent on how many people you know and can connect to in your own network. If you know fewer business associates who use Linkedin, your own network will be smaller and hence the access you have to others within the Linkedin network will also be less
  • It’s a useful source for finding individual contacts or locating decision makers within few accounts but does not have an option to bulk download contacts or export so that they can be uploaded to a CRM. It’s not ideal for lists that are needed for campaigns
  • Linkedin profiles don’t provide complete contact information such as postal addresses, phone numbers and email id’s. So it may not be as well suited as a direct information source to run direct mail, telemarketing or email campaigns

Jigsaw

• What is it?
  • Jigsaw is an online directory of decision makers and business contacts targeted especially at sales and marketing professionals who need to locate specific contact information on decision makers at accounts they are looking to target. Users can sign up free and then use points to buy a business contact they need. It uses a combination of a paid and social model where the user can either buy points for cash or earn points by sharing and uploading business contacts he/she already has in exchange for business contacts he/she needs which someone else may have added.
• How do you locate business contacts?
  • Before you start out locating contacts you need points in your account which works as credit. You can either earn points by contributing data that you already have or simply buy credits for money. Contacts can be searched through company name, industry, title, location and several other criteria. Once you have located the contacts you need you can simply buy them in exchange for points from your account. Alternatively Jigsaw also sells lists of contacts from within the database which allows you to select a list based on industry or types of contacts etc and purchase an export of the data to use in campaigns
• What are the pros of Jigsaw as a business contacts source?
  • The Jigsaw database has accumulated over 9 million contacts with a large range of contacts at almost all levels of an organization from executives to those at a deeper level which makes it one of the larger databases of its kind and provides a great source for contact information
  • The point system allows users to pay for only what they need virtually like buying contacts off a shelf and not having to pay for a subscription they may not make as much use of so its a pay-as-you-go model
  • The ability to earn points by contributing data allows you to barter your existing contact data and can enable you to access the contacts without having to use cash if you already have data that you can share
  • Jigsaw provides complete contact information from names, job titles, email addresses, postal addresses and direct phone numbers which makes it ideal as a source for email, tele and direct mail  campaigns
  • The option of buying a list is useful especially when you intend to upload the data into a CRM or other application for running campaigns
• What are the cons of Jigsaw as a business contacts source?
  • Although having a database of 9 million contacts is a benefit, it can also be a drawback since there is a fairly high percentage of contacts which has expired and although there is a system in place for users to mark bad contacts, the sheer volume of data makes it difficult to maintain the quality of it so its not uncommon to find contacts that no longer exist in their roles
  • Since the data is not added by the contact themselves, updates don’t reflect in the data when people have moved from their positions or companies
  • The lists are defined on a certain criteria and while you can specify the type of contacts or accounts you need, the contacts are identified by the type and level of contacts you need and not role based contacts which are more customized as against ready lists

Whats the verdict? It depends on what suits your requirements and is best for your marketing and sales efforts. So choose wisely!

When you are selling into mid-sized and large organizations, most likely you have multiple business contacts within your target account who drive, influence and take decisions. Depending on the industry vertical as well as the way your target accounts are organized, it is possible to have varied business contacts who take part in the decision making process. For example, if you are selling a web security product in the Education, Banking and Health care markets, you will find that the types and roles of contacts who drive the final decision in each of these verticals are varied. Understanding the web of contacts that drive and influence decisions for your product is critical for your sales and marketing success. Before you embark on expensive email, direct mail and telemarketing campaigns, the first order of business must be to acquire all business contacts at your target accounts who are expected to take part in the overall decision making process.

It is also critical to understand how every industry vertical may be different before defining who are your target contacts in each of the verticals. We recommend that you identify these by the roles and responsibilities they hold so that you get the right set of contacts to start with. Missing the mark on this critical foundational piece can lead to failure of all subsequent sales & marketing campaigns. Focus on understanding your decision makers and define them well for every vertical. Then simply build out a list of such role-specific decision makers and influencers to create your core CRM database of business contacts who you care about the most. Getting this right is crucial and its important to use the right team internally or outsource list building to the right vendors who gets it.

Fail on the core list and you will just see more failures in your sales & marketing campaigns. The list is at the heart of your sales machine, and its success or failure.