B2B Lead Lists – Should You Build Them or Buy?

Are you tired of purchasing low-quality b2b sales leads? Or realized that purchasing high-quality b2b leads will be too costly for you?

In either case, there you have one solution – build B2B lead lists. Well, it’s tricky, but it can help you a lot. This blog will detail everything about B2B lead lists. Let’s carry it on.

As the name itself suggests, it’s a list where you find leads. Basically it is a database of individuals who have shown interest in your offerings. Now, your sales team has to contact each individual one after another down the sales funnel to convert them into your customer.

A sales lead list is also a collection of selected leads where each lead matches your ideal customer profile. Thus, it should be your target to convert the leads into your loyal customers in order to sustain in the industry for the long term.

It’s all your inbound and outbound marketing efforts that you have a list of leads. You need to remember that this list contains lead information, which you have to establish further contact with. This list is formed with the collective efforts of your audience outreach strategies, newsletter sign-ups, cold emails, and, of course, because of targeted campaigns.

A list of leads would have every component that can help your team reach out to the leads. The company that provides you with the leads will cover everything that you need. However, when you try to build your B2B sales lead lists, you have to take care of these particular things;

To make a connection with the lead, you need contact information at the beginning. Leads included in the sales list must have the following contact information included in them;

Every detail of the contact information must be accurate, as you need to connect the leads throughout the sales journey.

B2B sales are mostly done by business professionals, and hence, you need information about their jobs. Once you get their job titles and basic job information, you can frame suitable strategies to convince them.

One interesting fact to notice: more than 72% of B2B buyers prefer a rep-free sales experience. It means you have to meet them as an experts instead of a sales representative to steal the deal. Hence, firmographic data can help you to understand how your leads are aligned with your buyer personas.

First of all, you need to understand where your company belongs, i.e, the industry, location, employee strengths, etc. Finding out company information can help you in two ways;

➤ Help you figure out the lead score

➤ You can personalize your pitch according to the targeted business

All demographic information should be included in the sales lead list. So that it can help the sales team to frame suitable strategies to approach the leads based on their demographic condition. Demographic information must have the data related to age, location, and education level of the leads.

Sales are happening because of pain points, hence, pain point information should be there in the sales leads lists. Again, the sales and marketing team can assess the pain points and make suitable strategies accordingly.

How the leads are interacting on social media is also a matter here to determine sales intent. Hence, every data that the leads are generating through a digital medium should be included in the sales intent information.

Lead data can be collected from multitudes of sources, but you have to understand where they are coming from. It’s important for you to know for strategizing your sales efforts. Mainly, leads data sourced from the following things;

With the lead scoring mechanism, you have to determine the score of your leads first. Leads that have a higher chance of getting converted should be given a higher score.

Every lead comes with a story, and they are likely to get converted if companies listen to their stories. Hence, every unique item related to the leads should be added to the database using comments.

If you’re planning to build your sales leads list by yourself, then you have to follow the data processing steps carefully. By following them, you can prepare your clean lead list without paying any third-party company.

Quality of the leads should remain intact, always!

To maintain the lead quality, you can check some of the following aspects;

Data Structure: Leads must follow a proper data structure throughout. For example, the phone numbers should follow a specific pattern, the name should be placed in proper format, and the rest of the data must be included in the database in the right format.

Data Source: All data should be acquired from a valid source by following the GDPR guidelines.

Accuracy: Lead data should sound proper, valid, and accurate in every form. Reliability should also be maintained throughout the database to get maximum return from the data.

At present, many companies (especially SaaS) are selling sales leads to B2B customers. These companies are promising to provide B2B buyers with warm leads that will definitely convert. For their services, these companies are charging their clients heavily. Do what they actually do? Well, they just process the data, that too you shared with them.

With the help of different data processing techniques and some data sources, these companies are collecting and refining your leads. They basically fill the vacuum of your internal data processing team. However, if you can include an extended data processing team at your operations, you can easily build your own B2B lead lists. That too, without spending too much.

Hence, the choice is yours. But building your own lead list database will benefit you the most.